Visual Studio Code Marketplace
Visual Studio Code Marketplace
Role
Primary distribution channel for every oriz-*-vsc-ext repo. The
official Microsoft-run marketplace at
marketplace.visualstudio.com — what code --install-extension and
the in-editor extension panel resolve against on a vanilla VS Code
install.
VS Code extensions in the family dual-publish here and to
Open VSX per
decisions/architecture/distribution-and-queues-locked.md.
JetBrains Marketplace was considered as a third target and explicitly
walked back — the family does not ship JetBrains plugins.
Free tier
- Unlimited extensions per publisher.
- Unlimited versions per extension.
- No developer fee, no review fee, no per-install fee.
Card / subscription required?
NO. Publishing to the marketplace requires an Azure DevOps PAT (Personal Access Token). Creating an Azure DevOps organization for PAT-only use is free and requires no card. The Microsoft account that owns the PAT is the same account used elsewhere in the family (GitHub login, Edge Add-ons partner center).
CI auto-publish
- name: Publish to VS Code Marketplace
run: |
pnpm exec vsce publish --pat "$VSCE_PAT" \
--packagePath dist/extension.vsix
env:
VSCE_PAT: ${{ secrets.VSCE_PAT }}
vsce (@vscode/vsce) is the official Microsoft CLI; it accepts
the same .vsix artifact that's pushed to Open VSX in the next
step, so packaging happens once. Credentials in
Doppler →
GitHub Secrets.
Alternatives
- Open VSX Registry — sibling, OSS-friendly fork. Required for VSCodium / Cursor / Theia / Gitpod / code-server users.
- JetBrains Marketplace — different IDE family entirely. Walked back
as a future publish target; family has no plans to ship JetBrains
plugins. See
decisions/architecture/distribution-and-queues-locked.md"walked-back" section.
Swap cost
Low — vsce publish is one CI step. Dropping it would lose the
Microsoft-VS-Code user base; not realistic, but mechanically cheap.
Why this is our pick
The default user installs VS Code from code.visualstudio.com and
gets Microsoft's marketplace pre-wired. Skipping it is unthinkable
for any VS Code extension. Free + no card means the only ongoing
cost is the CI step.