Open VSX Registry, a repository of extensions for Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code and other developer tools, is now under the jurisdiction of the Eclipse Foundation.
Bult on the Eclipse Open VSX project, the public repository has been transferred from development tools maker TypeFox and will be managed under the Eclipse Cloud DevTools working group, Eclipse said on March 30. Open VSX Registry is positioned as an open source, vendor-neutral alternative to Microsoft’s Visual Studio Marketplace, providing an open marketplace of extensions for Visual Studio Code-compatible editors including Eclipse Che and Eclipse Theia.
Eclipse stressed that development of the Open VSX Registry marketplace would be guided by the community rather than a single vendor. Open VSX Registry, the foundation argued, increases transparency and flexibility for extension users, publishers, and tool developers, particularly those using cloud-based tools and IDEs and who want to avoid being locked into proprietary models and marketplaces. Open VSX Registry, accessible here, has extensions providing capabilities ranging from Dart language support to YAML capabilities and Julia language support.
The Open VSX Registry had 983 extensions as of April 1, and Eclipse expects the number to grow significantly. And because Open VSX is open source, any organization can use it to deploy an internally hosted extension registry for in-house developers.