Use Electron ASAR to optimize file system access?

[auchenberg]

Have we considered using Electron's ASAR to optimize file system access? I imagine this could especially help Windows launch performance.

Found this old write-up from N1/Atom: atom/atom#10163, but it seems that they have moved away from it. Is ASAR considered obsoletely? @Tyriar

[bpasero]

@auchenberg we already benefit from the fact that most of our JS code is bundled into a single file. I think where a concept like ASAR could only help us is with node modules access which in our case is not bundled in any way.

/cc @alexandrudima who recently looked into ASAR when checking for file access on startup.

[alexdima]

👍

[jens1o]

What's the planned action here for November 2017? I'm seeing this everytime I update VSCode Insiders, that they are literally hundreds of thousands js files.

[alexdima]

Investigation results - #41353

[alexdima]

Pushed via #41353

[alexdima]

We have discovered at least 17 extensions that might make assumptions about the the core node_modules disk layout, so they might be broken by the change to ship them as node_modules.asar.

We need to communicate with these authors and understand their needs, plus give sufficient time to prepare for the change.

[alexdima]

After downloading all our extensions, and running searches over them, there are only 8 affected extensions:

☑ formulahendry.vscode-mysql (20,244 installs, ☑issue, ☑PR)

• Issue: Breaking Change regarding the usage of keytar formulahendry/vscode-mysql#22
• PR: Fixes #22: Adopt the usage of ASAR in VSCode formulahendry/vscode-mysql#25

☑ ms-azuretools.vscode-cosmosdb (39,149 installs, ☑issue, ☑PR)

• Issue: Breaking Change regarding the usage of keytar vscode-cosmosdb#364
• PR: Fixes #364: Adopt the usage of ASAR in VSCode vscode-cosmosdb#369

☑ms-vscode.azure-account (345,174 installs, ☑issue)

• Issue: Breaking Change regarding the usage of keytar vscode-azure-account#39

☑MS-vsliveshare.vsliveshare (6,460 installs)

☐ mshdinsight.azure-hdinsight (6,844 installs)

mshdinsight.azure-hdinsight/out/src/azure/authorization.js:32
  exports.keytar = require(`${vscode.env.appRoot}/node_modules/keytar`);

☑ PeterJausovec.vscode-docker (2,307,698 installs, ☑issue, ☑PR)

• Issue: Breaking Change regarding the usage of keytar and semver vscode-docker#217
• PR: Fixes #217: Adopt the usage of ASAR in VSCode vscode-docker#221

☑ satokaz.vscode-memo-life-for-you (374 installs, ☑issue)

• Issue: Breaking Change regarding the usage of vscode-ripgrep satokaz/vscode-memo-life-for-you#27

☑ vaniship.vue-ls (927 installs, ☑issue)

• Issue: Breaking Change regarding the usage of vscode-textmate u10/vscode-vue-ls#1

[yo1dog]

One more to add to your list. This extension is used as a dependency by other extensions as wells:
siegebell.scope-info (701 installs)

https://github.com/siegebell/scope-info/blob/master/src/text-mate.ts#L2

Thanks