As I promised in “jetson nano developers kit version b01” ( /2020/05/06/jetson-nano-developers-kit-version-b01/ ) I cloned a fresh copy of Visual Studio Code from its GitHub trunk and modified the file product.json as documented here ( https://www.clarenceho.net/2019/05/building-visual-studio-code-on-jetson.html ). It succeeded in building the second time and it initially enabled extensions. This is a fragment of the very top of the file. The new code added to product.json is in lines 23-27. There was no indication where to add it, so I just guessed and it appeared not to break the build. Please note the comma at the end of line 27.

{"nameShort": "Code - OSS","nameLong": "Code - OSS","applicationName": "code-oss","dataFolderName": ".vscode-oss","win32MutexName": "vscodeoss","licenseName": "MIT","licenseUrl": "https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/blob/master/LICENSE.txt","win32DirName": "Microsoft Code OSS","win32NameVersion": "Microsoft Code OSS","win32RegValueName": "CodeOSS","win32AppId": "{{E34003BB-9E10-4501-8C11-BE3FAA83F23F}","win32x64AppId": "{{D77B7E06-80BA-4137-BCF4-654B95CCEBC5}","win32UserAppId": "{{C6065F05-9603-4FC4-8101-B9781A25D88E}","win32x64UserAppId": "{{C6065F05-9603-4FC4-8101-B9781A25D88E}","win32AppUserModelId": "Microsoft.CodeOSS","win32ShellNameShort": "C&ode - OSS","darwinBundleIdentifier": "com.visualstudio.code.oss","linuxIconName": "com.visualstudio.code.oss","licenseFileName": "LICENSE.txt","reportIssueUrl": "https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/new","urlProtocol": "code-oss","extensionsGallery": {"serviceUrl": "https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/_apis/public/gallery","cacheUrl": "https://vscode.blob.core.windows.net/gallery/index","itemUrl": "https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items"},

In spite of starting with a fresh pull, the build ran much faster due to having all the npm packages already in place. Starting VSCode took the same amount of time as before. When it finally finished the first start, the extensions gallery was visible. Isn’t it lovely to behold?

So then I decided to install three extensions; C/C++, Go, and Python. We’ll lead off with the Python extension because that’s what always seems to bubble up to the top when we first open the extensions gallery.

After installing the first three extensions, I closed and re-opened VSCode. First problem is that the C/C++ extension won’t work on ARM.

I removed the C/C++ extension, then decided to see what else I could find in the extensions gallery. Except, when I removed the extension and opened the gallery, the gallery was empty. Restarting VSCode wouldn’t bring it back. It’s now empty.

Oh well. At least I can still edit C/C++ source files, with decent syntax highlighting, as shown below.

I will continue to use this version of VSCode for the time being. I suppose I could outfit Vim the same way I’ve done on Raspbian, or install Emacs and extend it as well. But I really do like the VSCode environment, and am slow to give it up even with the problems it appears to exhibit here. So far it behaves quite well as a source editor, probably the best of all the editors I’ve mentioned (and far better than gedit). I could also help the community by debugging further, or going back to the last branch release and trying that to see how it works. Getting npm set up fits with other projects I have in mind, so it definitely isn’t a waste for me. But I don’t want to get pulled down a deep rabbit hole working on VSCode for Ubuntu ARM on the Jetson Nano. The primary purpose of the Nanos are in support of embedded machine learning development.

Who knows where this will eventually lead…