Amazon.co.uk Widgets

Log in

X
VSCodium Icon from VSCodium GitHub licensed under MIT, Screenshot of Editor and App running on Android
VSCodium Icon from VSCodium GitHub licensed under MIT, Screenshot of Editor and App running on Android

I don't like proprietary licences containing telemetary so I have always eschewed VSCode.

Turns out that the vscode source code is open source, but the product built and packaged for download by the vendor is licenced differently, and contains telemetry/tracking. You can, perfecly legitimately, clone and build the source, covered by the OSI approved MIT licence.

Open source licences are licences that comply with the Open Source Definition – in brief, they allow software to be freely used, modified, and shared. To be approved by the Open Source Initiative (also known as the OSI) a licence must go through the Open Source Initiative’s licence review process.

TL:DR – Compliling the open source is a distraction for most people. Someone must have thought about that already — and they have! VSCodium is a community-driven, freely-licenced binary distribution of VSCode

Telemetry/tracking

Some tracking will probably still be enabled, and each extention you install is another vector for additional tracking to be added to your envronment. There are notes in the project documentation that explain how you can search for these things and try to disable or remove them.

The VSCodium project replaces the vendors update services with their own, and Extension update requests are sent to the Open VSX registry rather than the vendors extension marketplace.

Proprietary tools and extensions

Some extensions, notably from the vendor, have licence restrictions which prevent their use other than with the vendor product, but again these can be replaced with open source equivalents. Others will not work with VSCodium, but most will 'just work', including Flutter!

Open VSX Registry

There is an open alternative to the Visual Studio Marketplace too - The Open VSX Registry - which offers a community driven, fully open platform for publishing VS Code extensions. The Registry is built on Eclipse Open VSX, which is an open source project hosted at the Eclipse Foundation which proclaims the benefits of being a trusted Vendor-neutral, open source operation with governance.

Flutter and VSCodium

Installing Flutter support in VSCodium

Follow the Set up an editor instructions for VS Code.

  • Start VSCodium.
  • Choose Command Palette from the View menu.
  • Type "install" and select Extentions: Install Extensions from the dropdown list box.
  • Type "flutter" in the extensions search field, select Flutter in the list and click Install —This also installs the required Dart language plugin.
  • Choose Command Palette again from the View menu.
  • Type "doctor" and select Flutter: Run Flutter Doctor from the dropdown list box.
  • Check Flutter in the output pane for issues and address them as required.
  • Restart VSCodium and check that a running simulator or a connected physical device is visible in the status bar.

Editing, running and debugging your code

The Flutter extention analyses code and enables syntax highlighting, code completion, navigating to type declarations and finding type usages. It has an easy to use Problems menu item from the view menu which presents a line by line analysis of problems found.

You can debug using Flutter DevTools as well as using the built in debugging in VSCodium. The screenshot shows a running app with visible baselines after the button in VSCodium was set to enable them.

Stateful Hot Reload is supported by VSCodium. See Using hot reload for details.

Screenshots of VSCodium building and running a Flutter App VSCodium on macOS, connected to an Android device

Flutter project with tje Flutter DevTools open - screenshot
A Flutter project with the Flutter DevTools open
Flutter Android app with visible baselines - screenshot
Flutter based Android app with visible baseline

Licences, trademarks, source code licences and attributions

Licences, trademarks, source code licences and attributions

Multizone and this site is not affiliated with or endorsed by The Joomla! Project™. Any products and services provided through this site are not supported or warrantied by The Joomla! Project or Open Source Matters, Inc. Use of the Joomla!® name, symbol, logo and related trademarks is permitted under a limited licence granted by Open Source Matters, Inc. 928uk® is a trademark of Multizone Limited, registered in the UK. AdMob™, AdSense™, AdWords™, Android™, Chrome OS™, Chromebook™, Chrome™, DART™, Flutter™, Firebase™, Firestore™, Fuchsia™, Gmail™, Google Maps™, Google Pixel™, Google Play™, Pixelbook Go™, and Pixel™ and other trademarks listed at the Google Brand Resource center are trademarks of Google LLC and this site is not endorsed by or affiliated with Google in any way. Apple and the Apple logo are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc. The OSI logo trademark is the trademark of Open Source Initiative. Microsoft, CoPilot, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, and Windows are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. ROKU, the ROKU Logo, STREAMING STICK, ROKU TV, ROKU POWERED, the ROKU POWERED Logo, ROKU READY, the ROKU READY Logo, the purple fabric tag design,and the purple d-pad design are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Roku, Inc. in the UK, the United States and other countries. UNIX® and the X® logo are registered trademarks of The Open Group. Any other product or company names may be trademarks™ or registered® trademarks of their respective holders. Use of these trademarks in articles here does not apply affiliation or endorsement by any of them.

Where the source code is published here on ezone.co.uk or on our GitHub by Angus Fox, Multizone Limited it is licenced according to the open source practice for the project concerned.

BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" Licence
Original source code for mobile apps are licenced using the same licence as the one used by "The Flutter Authors". This Licence, the BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" Licence (bsd-3-clause) is a permissive licence with a clause that prohibits others from using the name of the project or its contributors to promote derived products without written consent.
GNU General Public Licence v2.0 or later
Original source code for Joomla! published here on ezone.co.uk by Angus Fox, Multizone Limited is licenced using the same licence as the one used by Joomla!. This Licence, the GNU General Public Licence Version 2 or later (gpl-2.0) is the most widely used free software licence and has a strong copyleft requirement. When distributing derived works, the source code of the work must be made available under the same licence.

You can use any code you find here, just respect the licences and dont use the name of this site or our company to promote derived products without written consent. I mean, why would you? You're not us!

Amazon Associate
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
Logo
Our Logo Image is by Freepik. We chose it because its an M and also the letter A twice - and that represents us.