Skip to content

Remote-SSH - VS Code Extension

Develop on remote machines using Visual Studio Code and SSH.

2024-08-08 Thu: VS Code Insiders required due to bug in 1.91

Keycutter supports VS Code Remote-SSH extension hosts with:

  • FIDO SSH Keys (e.g. Yubikey)
  • ssh-agent forwarding
  • Confirmed working:
    • Linux
    • macOS
    • Windows (WSL Ubuntu)

Install

  1. Enable extension:

    code --install-extension ms-vscode-remote.remote-ssh

  2. Connect to remote host:

    • CTRL-SHIFT-P
    • Select Remote-SSH: Connect to Host
    • Select a host
    • VSCode will install VS Code Server on remote host if not present.

Configure

Update VS Code Settings:

{
    "remote.SSH.enableRemoteCommand": true,
    "remote.SSH.showLoginTerminal": true,
    "remote.SSH.logLevel": "trace",
    "remote.SSH.useCurlAndWgetConfigurationFiles": true,
    "remote.SSH.remotePlatform": {
        "squid": "linux"
    },
    "remote.SSH.permitPtyAllocation": true,
    "remote.SSH.enableDynamicForwarding": false,
    "window.newWindowProfile": "Default",
    "files.autoSave": "afterDelay"
}

Linux

Tested on Fedora.

macOS

Tested on ???

Windows with WSL

We can make VS Code on Windows use WSL for SSH.

Benefits include:

  • Use config from ~/.ssh/config instead of having to copy it to Windows.
  • Use OpenSSH from linux instead of whatever Microsoft provides (they're not that into SSH).

We need to tell Windows to use WSL's SSH which means:

  • No need to sync config from ~/.ssh to Windows
  • We can load our shell environment.

Steps

  1. Put a simple Windows batch file on the Windows filesystem:

    # Filename: %USERPROFILE%/ssh.bat
C:\Windows\system32\wsl.exe --exec bash -ic "echo 'Running in WSL: ssh %*'; ssh %*"

  2. Tell VS Code to use it by setting remote.SSH.path:

    {
    "remote.SSH.path": "%USERPROFILE%\\\\ssh.bat",
    "remote.SSH.useCurlAndWgetConfigurationFiles": true,
    "remote.SSH.enableRemoteCommand": true,
    "remote.SSH.remotePlatform": {
        "*": "linux"
    },
    "remote.SSH.permitPtyAllocation": true,
    "workbench.sideBar.location": "right",
    "remote.SSH.enableDynamicForwarding": false
}

  3. Copy scp.exe to same location as ssh.bat

    VSCode 1.93 (insiders build) looked for SCP in same dir as ssh.bat. More investigation would be good.

    cp /mnt/c/Program\ Files/OpenSSH/scp.exe /mnt/c/User/<username>/

Notes

Setting: remote.SSH.defaultExtensions

I maintain a list of extensions

If there are extensions that you would like to always have installed on any SSH host, you can specify which ones using the remote.SSH.defaultExtensionsproperty in settings.json.

For example:

"remote.SSH.defaultExtensions": [
    "vscodevim.vim",
    "fosshaas.fontsize-shortcuts",
    "eamodio.gitlens",
    "ms-python.python",
    "ms-python.pylint",
    "ms-toolsai.jupyter"
],

See also