What is VSCode User Setup for Windows?

Question

On a Windows workstation after a recent update of VSCode I'm prompted (recommended) to install a "User Setup Distribution of VSCode for Windows"

The link for more info leads to:

Download User Setup

If you are a current user of the system-wide Windows setup, you will be prompted to switch to the user setup, which we recommend using from now on. Don't worry, all your settings and extensions will be kept during the transition.

I don't see anything that explains what changes this distribution makes or how it's different from a distribution for other platforms, like X11/linux.

Code is a great editor, so I use it on various platforms depending where I am. Where is the explanation of what is included in this updated "Distribution"?

https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_26#_user-setup-for-windows

---

Famous Question Badge Celebration! : love to VSCodium https://vscodium.com/ ... and highly recommend to anyone interested in this Q.

Solution 1

VSCode User Setup is a new installer, with a new install strategy, which installs the whole executable for VSCode and its dependencies in directories which don't require system-level / administrator permissions to modify. This allows a few things:

• Users who don't have admin privileges to their workstation can still install and use VS Code
• VS Code can perform its updates with fewer prompts (basically without the system-level privilege escalation prompts)

One tip: If you already had VSCode installed as a system-wide installation and you switch to the new installer as prompted/recommended, the User Setup installer will suggest that you uninstall the system-wide install first. I was a little nervous that I might lose my extensions doing this, but I went ahead and tried it and am happy to report that my extensions, recent projects, and other data regarding my VSCode use remained intact between uninstalling the "old" version and then proceeding with install of the new User Setup version.

Solution 2

(I'm a first time responder after many years.) Note there is another useful discussion on this subject at: (What is the migration procedure for moving from Windows system-wide Visual Studio Code to user setup?). I too got worried when I got unexpected messages from the install informing me that the version was already installed and asking me if I wanted to continue? I clicked NO, why continue if it is already installed. However, in the process I became aware of the distinction between 'distribution' and 'version'. It turns out that the install works pretty much flawlessly no matter how you go about it. You can delete the system-wide distribution or not. If you do delete, you can delete before the new install, (which I did). You can also delete after the new install. (I didn't read too closely but there might be an extra step if you want to use both distributions.) In hindsight, since all approaches work nearly flawlessly, a minimal amount of instruction is all that was required. But in foresight, a little extra information on what to expect would have expedited the process for several people, including me. P.S. I found the answers in this thread useful. Thanks.

Comments

[bolov]

The question is very confusing because no context is provided. When are you prompted? What program prompts you? What are you trying to do?

[user1703401]

"system-wide", what you have now, means that every user that logs in to the machine can use VSCode. This is not a very common requirement, most programmers have a machine that only they use and always log in with the same username+password. But it is a bit more hassle to get it updated, you get the UAC elevation prompt to update. What they like now, the user-specific setup, can avoid this. It stores VSCode stuff in a user-specific directory that can be written to without UAC elevation. So if you are the only user of the machine, or have lots of disk space, then you like the recommendation

[bolov]

literally from the anchor within the page he linked to

[Yin Cognyto]

Very clear answer, but it might be worth noting (if you do have knowledge of it, of course) whether or not the "user setup" version will eventually replace the system-wide setup in the future, or they will keep going with both setup versions in parallel.

[pilau]

Dusty, were you using the Settings Sync extension or was the recovery of your previous environment built in to VSCode?

[Dusty]

@pilau - No, I don't have that extension. It seems VSCode carried over my settings from the system-wide install to the new User Setup install without any external help.

[pilau]

Thanks, that sounds good. I was asking due to this issue