How to version and publish a vscode extension?

[jindong-zhannng]

Hi team, I am building a vscode extension and wanna to leverage changesets to manage changelog and version for it.

I didn't find any guide relates to publish package to vscode registry instead of npm. I already learned this tool can work with npm well e.g. checking remote latest version from npm before publishing. But I am not sure will these features work with vscode registry as well. Any guidelines? Thanks!

[Andarist]

The key is to tag the extension before publishing: https://github.com/mdx-js/mdx-analyzer/blob/3069af7ade2feea2a65ad9ddcf241ceec55ec314/scripts/tag-extension.mjs

Then you can do this before calling changeset publish:
https://github.com/mdx-js/mdx-analyzer/blob/3069af7ade2feea2a65ad9ddcf241ceec55ec314/release.sh#L6-L7

And you need to wire it up with changesets/action:
https://github.com/mdx-js/mdx-analyzer/blob/3069af7ade2feea2a65ad9ddcf241ceec55ec314/.github/workflows/version.yml#L23-L24

[evoactivity]

Hi @Andarist

Can you provide a few more details on the above.

tag-extension.mjs just seems to output console.log(`\nNew tag: ${tag}`). Does npx changeset publish use the output of the previous command to decide what the new tag should be?

npx changeset publish is being run in the release.sh file and then vsce and ovsx handle publishing to the marketplaces. Is the changeset publish command required for repos that only publish to the extension marketplaces. Doesn't that command handle publishing to NPM as well as creating the github release? Or can the NPM part be disabled somehow?