Workshop — VS Code Extension

Develop inside Workshop containers directly from VS Code. Workshop launches LXD system containers with Ubuntu from simple YAML definitions checked into your project, giving each project a clean, reproducible environment that the whole team shares.

Reopening a project in a Workshop container from VS Code

Features

Workshops view in the Activity Bar: every workshop defined in the project with its status, base, hostname, and installed SDKs.
Add New Workshop: a wizard that picks SDKs from the Canonical reference catalogue, a base, and a name, then runs workshop init for you.
Reopen in Workshop: launches or starts the workshop if needed and reconnects the window to it over SSH, with the project mounted at /project.
Refresh and Reopen: offered automatically when a definition file changes; rebuilds the workshop and reconnects.
Failure handling: a rejected definition opens next to the daemon's error log; a refresh that fails halfway pauses, and you choose between Reopen and Debug, Continue Refresh, and Abort Refresh.
Reopen Locally from the Workshops view or the remote indicator, and Turn Off… to remove the container while keeping the definition.

The definition change prompt

Requirements

OS: Ubuntu 22.04 or later
Architecture: amd64 or arm64

LXD from the 6/stable channel:

sudo snap refresh lxd --channel=6/stable

Workshop 0.9.5 or later:
```
snap install workshop --classic
```
Remote - SSH, installed automatically as a dependency

Getting Started

Open a project folder in VS Code and click the Workshop icon in the Activity Bar.
Click Add New Workshop, pick your SDKs (for example go), keep the default base and the name dev, and confirm. The wizard creates .workshop/dev.yaml and opens it. You can also create the definition from a terminal:
```
workshop init dev --sdks go/1.27/stable
```
See Reference SDKs for the full catalogue of SDKs maintained by Canonical.
Click Reopen in Workshop in the notification, or next to the workshop in the Workshops view. VS Code launches the workshop and reconnects inside the container; the integrated terminal now runs there.

To return to your local window at any time, click Reopen Locally in the Workshops view or in the remote indicator in the status bar.

The step-by-step guide, including refreshing a workshop after a definition change and recovering from a broken definition, is in the Workshop documentation: How to develop in a workshop with VS Code.

Restricted Mode

When VS Code opens a folder in Restricted Mode (untrusted workspace), most extensions, including this one, are disabled, which prevents using the Workshop panel to reconnect or reopen locally.

To allow this extension to run even in untrusted workspaces, add the following to your user settings.json (Ctrl+Shift+P → Open User Settings (JSON)):

{
  "extensions.supportUntrustedWorkspaces": {
    "canonical.workshop": {
      "supported": true
    }
  }
}

With this in place, the Workshop panel remains active in restricted mode so you can open the project in a workshop sandbox and continue not trusting it on the host.

Development

This project uses Workshop for its development environment:

workshop launch
workshop connect ext/test-deps:desktop

Open the project in VS Code and press F5 to start an Extension Development Host.

Useful commands:

workshop run -- test
workshop run -- build

Workshop