Expose native support for USB, HID and Serial device access in VS Code (Desktop)

[thegecko]

Since Electron version 25, Web-* device access has been possible using the functionality described here: https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/tutorial/devices

This request is to expose this functionality in VS Code on the desktop and bring functionality on-par with the browser version added in #152310

The benefit of this is that native device support is added using the functionality already available in Chrome shipped as part of VS Code, so there is no extra bloat.

It means extension developers no longer have to include external packages such as node-usb or SerialPort. In many cases this approach should be more stable and reliable, too (e.g. chrome uses winusb for device access over libusb as used in node-usb).

From a security perspective, it uses the same model as the browser, so brings the device authorisation model too.

A PR adding this can be found here: #198047

cc @bpasero

[vs-code-engineering]

This feature request is now a candidate for our backlog. The community has 60 days to upvote the issue. If it receives 20 upvotes we will move it to our backlog. If not, we will close it. To learn more about how we handle feature requests, please see our documentation.

Happy Coding!

[supersat]

I have long wanted this, ever since #116761. I think it would work especially well with devcontainers for FPGA-based or other embedded devices.

[vs-code-engineering]

🙂 This feature request received a sufficient number of community upvotes and we moved it to our backlog. To learn more about how we handle feature requests, please see our documentation.

Happy Coding!