Publishing

The Strata VS Code extension is published to the VS Code Marketplace as part of the automated release pipeline.

Automated publishing (CI)

Publishing is triggered automatically by ci-release.yml when a vX.Y.Z tag is pushed:

  1. ci-build.yml compiles the TypeScript, packages a .vsix, and uploads it as the vsix artifact.

  2. ci-release.yml downloads the artifact, attaches it to the GitHub Release, then publishes to the Marketplace using @vscode/vsce.

The only secret required is VSCE_PAT — a Personal Access Token scoped to Marketplace > Manage.

Adding the VSCE_PAT secret

Go to https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/manage and sign in with the publisher account (huybrechts-xyz). 2. Click your account icon → Personal access tokens → New Token. 3. Set:

  • Name: VSCE_PAT

  • Organization: All accessible organizations

  • Scopes: Marketplace → Manage

  • Expiry: 1 year (maximum)

  1. Copy the token.

  2. In the GitHub repository go to Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions → New repository secret.

  3. Name: VSCE_PAT, value: the token you copied.

Manual publishing

To publish manually from a local machine:

cd src/vscode
npm ci
npx tsc -p tsconfig.json --noEmit false
npx @vscode/vsce package --no-dependencies --skip-license --out ../../dist/
npx @vscode/vsce publish --packagePath ../../dist/xyz-strata-*.vsix

vsce publish will prompt for your PAT if VSCE_PAT is not set in the environment.

Alternatively, set the environment variable first:

$env:VSCE_PAT = "<your-token>"
npx @vscode/vsce publish --packagePath ../../dist/xyz-strata-*.vsix

Bumping the extension version

The extension version in src/vscode/package.json is independent of the Python CLI version in VERSION.txt. Bump it manually before releasing when the extension has user-visible changes:

# In src/vscode/
npm version minor   # or patch / major

This updates version in package.json and creates a local git commit. Include the commit in your release branch before merging.

Verifying a release

After the pipeline completes, confirm the new version is live:

npx @vscode/vsce show huybrechts-xyz.xyz-strata

Or visit https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=huybrechts-xyz.xyz-strata.