Adopt the pre-release extension feature

[isidorn]

Prerequisites

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Summary

Refs: microsoft/vscode#15756

VS Code now supports pre-release extensions. Docs that should help: https://code.visualstudio.com/api/working-with-extensions/publishing-extension#prerelease-extensions

I know powershell has a separate powershell preview extension. Ideally we would deprecate that extension and you would publish pre-release versions. VS Code can migrate your users automatically once you do the adoption.

Let me know what you think.

fyi @TylerLeonhardt

Proposed Design

No response

[andyleejordan]

We've got this on our radar, but question for you @isidorn: I know VS Code now supports this, but isn't the marketplace still working on full support (especially around supporting extensions to publish with proper semantic versioning, with the necessary pre-release suffixes)? I looked and can't find the issue for the latter, but it's a long open one.

[isidorn]

@andschwa yes, MP is working on supporting full semver versioning. However since the MP is currently in the process of changing their backend infrastructure this will probably take some time. My very very rough estimate, end of 2022 at the earliest.
Here's the issue on the MP side microsoft/vsmarketplace#50

[andyleejordan]

Cool, thanks! I'll keep an eye on that and when this is fully supported we'd love to do it.

[JustinGrote]

@andschwa why is microsoft/vsmarketplace#50 a blocker for us? At least since the updated CI and the CalVer versioning, we don't use any semver suffixes in the published packages, and we only use 3 octets so if you wanted to clearly distinguish Preview from stable, the fourth octet could be used e.g. 2022.02.0.4

[andyleejordan]

We use -preview suffix for the preview releases, and that's explicitly what marks them as newer (and not stable), and is what their implementation seems to require as well.

[JustinGrote]

@andschwa I'm confused

When publishing the vsix why can't you just either append an extra .0/.1 or remove the preview flag on the filename when publishing?

EDIT: Nevermind, reading
https://code.visualstudio.com/api/working-with-extensions/publishing-extension#prerelease-extensions

Makes this difficult for calver, because newer versions will bump prerelease people to stable regardless, making it difficult to maintain two long-term tracks. Crappy implementation if you ask me, there should be an option to always stay on pre-release if it is tagged that way.

[JustinGrote]

@andschwa I did some more thinking on this, why not just append .1 as the forth octet to every preview release? Then just have to make sure a preview always goes out with the stable on releases (which they do today)

For instance:

2022.02.1.1 - Prerelease
2022.02.1 - Stable

2022.02.2.1 - Prerelease
2022.02.2 - Stable

2022.03.0.1 - Prerelease
2022.03.0 - Stable

etc.