I honestly thought I’d seen every way a dev environment could fight back. Then I tried Publishing a VS Code Extension for a simple theme. You’d think in the era of modern registries, pushing a package would be a one-command affair like npm publish. However, I found myself navigating the labyrinth of Azure DevOps personal access tokens and a UI that felt like it was hanging on by a thread.
If you’ve spent hours perfecting your syntax highlighting, the last thing you want is a race condition in a Microsoft login form. In this guide, I’m going to skip the marketing fluff and give you the straight workaround for the messiest parts of the registry process.
Preparing Your Manifest for Publishing a VS Code Extension
Before you even touch a CLI tool, your package.json needs to be bulletproof. One specific gotcha I hit: you cannot use scoped names (like @my-handle/theme) if you plan on supporting Open VSX. Other editors like Cursor or VSCodium pull from there, and they aren’t fans of the scope syntax.
{
"name": "twilight-cosmos-theme",
"displayName": "Twilight Cosmos",
"description": "A dark theme for deep focus sessions",
"version": "1.0.0",
"publisher": "your-id",
"engines": {
"vscode": "^1.75.0"
},
"icon": "assets/icon.png",
"contributes": {
"themes": [
{
"label": "Twilight Cosmos",
"uiTheme": "vs-dark",
"path": "./themes/twilight-cosmos-color-theme.json"
}
]
},
"keywords": ["theme", "dark", "cosmos", "color-theme"]
}Notice the contributes key. Specifically, this is the hook that tells the editor exactly where your JSON logic lives. Without it, your extension is just a dead folder. If you’re struggling with keyword ideas, I’ve previously discussed how AI can assist with code quality and metadata generation—just don’t let it hallucinate your versioning.
The Azure DevOps Labyrinth
To use the official vsce (Visual Studio Code Extensions) CLI, you need a Personal Access Token (PAT) from Azure DevOps. This is where most developers lose their minds. Consequently, the backend often hangs or redirects you to a generic landing page.
Senior Tip: If Azure keeps erroring out, don’t keep clicking. Wait 24 hours for the account provisioning to settle. If you’re in a hurry, there is a manual hack: you can package the extension locally and upload the file directly to the Visual Studio Marketplace.
# The standard approach
npx vsce login <publisher_id>
npx vsce publish
# The "it's broken" workaround
npx vsce packageRunning vsce package generates a .vsix file. You can simply drag and drop this into the Marketplace dashboard. It bypasses the CLI login issues entirely.
Open VSX and the Cursor Ecosystem
You shouldn’t stop at the Microsoft Marketplace. A huge portion of the dev community has moved to editors like Cursor. If you’re building your theme inside an AI-assisted environment, check out my strategy for Safe Code Refactoring in Cursor. These editors use Open VSX.
Publishing here requires an Eclipse Foundation account. Specifically, you have to link your GitHub repo and sign an agreement. Once that’s done, you use the ovsx tool. Unlike Microsoft’s tokens, Open VSX tokens don’t expire every few months, which is a massive win for stability.
Solving the README Image Bottleneck
Here is a common bug: you ship the extension, but your screenshots are broken in the marketplace view. Both registries fail to resolve relative URLs in your README.md. To fix this, you must use absolute URLs pointing to your main GitHub branch.
<!-- This will break -->
<!-- Use this instead -->
Look, if this Publishing a VS Code Extension stuff is eating up your dev hours, let me handle it. I’ve been wrestling with WordPress and developer tooling since the 4.x days.
Final Takeaway on Extension Deployment
Publishing isn’t just about code; it’s about navigating the infrastructure. Whether it’s dealing with transient Azure errors or claiming namespaces on Open VSX, the goal is to get your tool into users’ hands without your token expiring mid-ship. Refactor your manifest, fix your image paths, and get that .vsix live. Ship it.
