OpenVSCode provides a version of VS Code that runs on a server on a remote machine and allows access through a modern web browser.
It’s based on the same infrastructure used by Gitpod or GitHub Codespaces at scale.
According to the project’s GitHub page, in 2019 the VS Code team began refactoring its architecture in order to support a browser-based working mode. This architecture has been adopted by both Gitpod and GitHub, but many important elements have still not been open sourced.
“At Gitpod we’ve been asked a lot about how we do it. So we thought we might just share the minimal set of changes needed, so people can rely on the latest version of VS Code, have a straightforward upgrade path and low maintenance effort,” the team behind the project said on the project’s GitHub page.
The team reiterated that it only adds the minimal bits required to run VS Code in a server scenario and that it has no intention of changing VS Code in any way or adding any features through this.
