Stop downloading binaries for every single architecture in all hosts

Here is what is in shellcheck’s extension now:

binaries/
    darwin/
        arm64/
            shellcheck
        x64/
            shellcheck
    linux/
        arm/
            shellcheck
        arm64/
            shellcheck
        x64/
            shellcheck
    win32/
        x32/
            shellcheck.exe

Suppose I have an x64 Linux machine, the extension should only download binaries/linux/x64/shellcheck, saving 120MB (~85%) disk space.

Similarly, if the host is Windows, only binaries/win32/x32/shellcheck.exe should be downloaded.

4 solutions to this:

1. Download only that 1 binary package in the .vsix (saves bandwidth too but not feasible(?))
2. Download all binaries and remove irrelevant binaries (works but wastes bandwidth)
3. Setting to point shellcheck to use an external binary installed in the system (requires extra setup but can save disk space further by using system binaries)
4. Download binary seperately (check does binary exist everytime, if not, download the suitable binary)

I think solutions 3 and 4 are best. Or maybe we can have solution 5 by combining solution 3 and 4 (best of the best!).

Temporary solution: User removes the unused binary him/herself (works, but need to do so every update)

Hope that this will get implemented soon.

[babaric-dev]

So we’ll just have to wait.

[felipecrs]

a platform specific vsix means there are multiple vix build and distributed (you only download the one needed, nice side effect: there can be an “all OS ones” - which does not ship the binary but instead needs shellcheck.executablePath to be set)

BTW, I’m reading the documentation at https://code.visualstudio.com/api/working-with-extensions/publishing-extension#platformspecific-extensions at I don’t think it’s possible to have a “all OS ones” variant. But, for all the platforms that we don’t have a binary for, the vsix will contain no binaries.