How to edit code through SSH on Visual Studio Code (VSCode) without running additional software in the server?

Question

VS Code's default Remote SSH feature installs and runs undesired software on the server for watching files and other purposes which I don't totally understand and don't care.

Is there some plugin or setup which provides a simple way to just tell VS Code in a workspace file or in settings my SSH Server Credentials and be able to edit files in the server in the same way I do with codeanywhere.com, where I can simple see the server files in a exploration bar to the left and edit files as tabs to the right.

It's totally the same thing I get with the default Remote SSH VSCode feature, except that I don't want to kill small servers by running additional expensive processes that take excess memory and CPU.

I also don't want to have to mount the remote file system with SSHFS unless that's managed automatically by some software because SSHFS requires a lot of fine tuning to keep the connection alive and everything, and I also would like to keep the option to open terminal tabs that are directly connected to my server...

Answer 1

I've been testing the sshfs vscode plugin from Kelvin Schoofs and it seems to do a decent job at handling the connectivity issues with sshfs and also offers the feature to open the terminal panels with a simple right click, so that would be the answer.

1. Doesn't run anything on the server beyond the ssh connection
2. You don't have to monitor or maintain the connection it self or the mount points, the plugin does it for you.
3. You can open terminal panels easily
4. You get all the normal vscode features (even the anoying linters for everyting)
5. It seems to mount the server folder inside whatever workspace you have opened which is a little weird.

I think this features only make it worthwhile, and solve all the requirements in the question, but there are several more features like server tasks, and more...

Answer 2

The short answer is, there's no way to accomplish this in the constraints you've set.

The way "Remote SSH" works in VSCode is it establishes an SSH session to the remote host, downloads "host" software on the remote server, and tunnels through the SSH connection to talk to that host software.

You can think of the way VSCode does this as splitting it's own executable code between the GUI from the file operations. It runs the GUI on your computer, but the file operations on the remote one, and uses the SSH connection for them to talk to one another.

The alternatives to that are either running SSHFS, which as you said yourself is quite finicky (though there's one extension for VSCode that somewhat handles that), or some kind of file-synchronization (Unison comes to mind), where you're effectively editing local files, and then the files/changes are being synchronised remotely.

Another possibility, but that again comes with it's own limitations, would be to use the new "hosted" VSCode (on https://vscode.dev), and use that to edit a remote repo (say, in GitHub). Then just login to the remote server to pull the code