I am developing an extension for VS Code. This extension is already good enough for me to use during daily work, but not good enough to be published (yet). Is there a canonical way to make an unpublished extension under development available to VS Code? Optimally, I would like to always have the current state of the code running.

I did find a way that seems to work, but I'm not sure whether this is a terrible hack or okay: Create a symbolic link in VS Code's extensions directory (~/.vscode/extensions on Linux) to the development directory. Is there a better/official way?

CodePudding user response：

You can package your extension (even if it's in development) using vsce with the command vsce package. This will create a .vsix file which you can install in your regular instance of VSCode in the marketplace menu (click on the ... icon at the top and select "Install from .vsix file).

If you need to view the logs of the extension, go to Help>Toggle Developer tools and use the console to view your extension's output (if there is any).