How to know user wide code installation running or System wide installation

[shanalikhan]

Is there any way to check if the code is running a user wide or system wide mode via API.

[joaomoreno]

There isn't any way of knowing since it is an installation-time feature. Can I ask: what is the goal you are trying to achieve?

[shanalikhan]

Settings sync needs to know in order to setup and get User folder and code binary for reading / writing the settings and extensions respectively.

I can read the code binary location at process.argv0 but need to get User folder location.
There should be some variable like currently for Portable mode there is process.env.VSCODE_PORTABLE that gives you path, but not for OSS and NON OSS versions.

Or atleast some identifier on which I can setup Settings Sync on read / write user level by hard code as currently in Settings Sync I have hard coded paths for System Level, Portable, OSS and Non OSS based on Operating Systems due to unavailability of such things.

Currently I'm reading the user

https://github.com/shanalikhan/code-settings-sync/blob/master/src/environmentPath.ts#L110

[joaomoreno]

Settings sync needs to know in order to setup and get User folder and code binary for reading / writing the settings and extensions respectively.

You shouldn't need to know about user/system at all. What you need are the paths to two directories: user-data-dir and extensions-dir.

@jrieken What do you think about exposing them via API?

@sandy081 Any objections?

[shanalikhan]

Similar issue opened that also focused on Settings Sync years ago.

#2741

This issue needs to be solved on priority because whenever User Based Installation becomes default way of installing Code, Settings Sync wont work.

[sandy081]

Is it safe/ok to assume the parent of the extension dir as extensions-dir?

[joaomoreno]

@sandy081 Not in extension development scenarios.

[shanalikhan]

@joaomoreno whats the update, when you do think it will be fixed ?

[joaomoreno]

@shanalikhan Notice this is a feature request, not a bug.

@jrieken What do you think about #66029 (comment)?

[jrieken]

I think it's dangerous - we don't really want extensions to copy binaries from the extensions folder, right?

[joaomoreno]

@jrieken They are already doing it, unfortunately. But the way they get there is through path magic.

[shanalikhan]

Settings Sync unable to work with code OSS versions due to this reason that user-data-dir and extensions-dir. These is no way to get that.

Please discuss this ticket in your upcoming sprint/release planning sessions.

[gandarez]

There's already a function to detect if portable is set and it's defined into process.env['VSCODE_PORTABLE']

https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/blob/master/src/bootstrap.js#L239
https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/blob/master/src/bootstrap.js#L277