Hello,

I'm interested in how people are using VSC for development on Power Linux.

In an ideal world we would use the remote system extension, as I do on x86 Linux, but this is not available for ppc64le.

I tend to use the SSH FS extension but that does have some limitations e.g. integration with VSCs source control

Any thoughts or suggestions?

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Glenn Robinson
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Hey Glenn,

Unfortunately as you noted, the remote extension isn't available on ppc64le, and seems to be one of the only VSCode components that isn't open source.  I'd think it's very unlikely that it wouldn't work if we had the code, Microsoft just doesn't support it and thus there's no public build.  There's a lot of support on this issue.

Depending on what your project is, you could use cross compilers (either on your Linux host or through WSL if you're on Windows) to enable IDE-like features.  If you don't need IDE-like features and you just want source control integration, you can just use VSCode as an editor and push your changes to the Power system when it's time to build and test.

You could also run VSCode on your Power server itself and access it over the network with code-server.  Haven't tried this one myself but I've heard of it being used.

Truly open source editors like Emacs work fine on any architecture, I write C on Power with clangd code navigation and completion and inline errors etc remotely from my x86 laptop and it works "like native".

Hope you find something that works for you.

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Russell Currey
Linux kernel hardening lead
IBM Power Systems
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Hello Russell
Sorry but not completely clear to me your assumptions. How can we debug code that must run on IBM Power from a Windows machine running VSCode? Could you please explain again the alternatives in case answer to previous question is NO?

how can I install VScode on Power?

thank you 

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Luca Pasquini
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Original Message:
Sent: Mon June 20, 2022 09:56 PM
From: Russell Currey
Subject: Using Microsoft VSC for development on RHEL ppc64le

Hey Glenn,

Unfortunately as you noted, the remote extension isn't available on ppc64le, and seems to be one of the only VSCode components that isn't open source.  I'd think it's very unlikely that it wouldn't work if we had the code, Microsoft just doesn't support it and thus there's no public build.  There's a lot of support on this issue.

Depending on what your project is, you could use cross compilers (either on your Linux host or through WSL if you're on Windows) to enable IDE-like features.  If you don't need IDE-like features and you just want source control integration, you can just use VSCode as an editor and push your changes to the Power system when it's time to build and test.

You could also run VSCode on your Power server itself and access it over the network with code-server.  Haven't tried this one myself but I've heard of it being used.

Truly open source editors like Emacs work fine on any architecture, I write C on Power with clangd code navigation and completion and inline errors etc remotely from my x86 laptop and it works "like native".

Hope you find something that works for you.

------------------------------
Russell Currey
Linux kernel hardening lead
IBM Power Systems
------------------------------

Hi Glenn,

in an ideal world I don't use "Remote system extension" or sshfs. I commit my changes to the repo and the pipeline builds them for me. I get back the result of the build and if the build was successful, then results of the tests. As you can imagine I do it using VSCode on my Mac (most of the times). Sometimes using vim.

In a not such ideal world I used already proposed code-server on Linux on Power and on IBM AIX (self built) if I need VSCode. But usually vi is enough in this case.

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Andrey Klyachkin

https://www.power-devops.com
------------------------------

Hi Andrey,

I agree that in a fully reproducible, platform-agnostic setup, a commit-and-CI approach is clean and highly effective.

However, I see structural limitations when working with platform-specific systems (like in this thread), a few I can think of:

• The debuggin feedback loop becomes slower.
• We lose interactive debugging capabilities.
• Git history hygiene.

For these reasons, I would argue that a hybrid model is not just a preference but often the practical optimum in non-replicable environments: remote SSH or interactive sessions for development and debugging, and CI/CD strictly as a final correctness and integration gate.

In such environments, treating CI/CD as the primary feedback mechanism seems to trade off engineering efficiency for architectural purity.

How do you handle deep, interactive debugging  without using remote development tools or an interactive session on the target machine?

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Syed Muhammad Shayan
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Tue February 27, 2024 05:25 AM
From: Andrey Klyachkin
Subject: Using Microsoft VSC for development on RHEL ppc64le

Hi Glenn,

in an ideal world I don't use "Remote system extension" or sshfs. I commit my changes to the repo and the pipeline builds them for me. I get back the result of the build and if the build was successful, then results of the tests. As you can imagine I do it using VSCode on my Mac (most of the times). Sometimes using vim.

In a not such ideal world I used already proposed code-server on Linux on Power and on IBM AIX (self built) if I need VSCode. But usually vi is enough in this case.

------------------------------
Andrey Klyachkin

https://www.power-devops.com
------------------------------