Child process IPC message fails on Windows - BTW why soooo big for a color picker (137MB)

[vhanla]

• Extension Version: 0.4.5
• VS Code Version: 1.23.1
• OS Version: Windows 10 x64
• Node.js Version (result of command node -v): v10.0.0
• NPM Version (result of command npm -v): 6.0.1

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Start, restart, uninstall, reinstall
2. Invoke Pick Color from Command Palette (ctrl+shift+p)
3. I doesn't do anything

I even did npm install from extension's directory. It was 121MB then 137MB in size. So big for a color picker IMHO. Maybe you can opt out electron and use FreePascal to create a multiplatform picker or any other programming language.

Log (All lines): (Click menu of VS Code "Help > Toggle Developer Tools", and click "Console" tab)

[Extension Host] Start child process...
/C:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft VS Code/resources/app/out/vs/workbench/workbench.main.js:263 [Extension Host] Check version of: electron-prebuilt
/C:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft VS Code/resources/app/out/vs/workbench/workbench.main.js:263 [Extension Host] Check version of: comma-separated-values
/C:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft VS Code/resources/app/out/vs/workbench/workbench.main.js:263 [Extension Host] Check version of: js-yaml
/C:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft VS Code/resources/app/out/vs/workbench/workbench.main.js:263 [Extension Host] Check version of: process-bridge
/C:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft VS Code/resources/app/out/vs/workbench/workbench.main.js:263 [Extension Host] Try to send IPC message: 1
/C:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft VS Code/resources/app/out/vs/workbench/workbench.main.js:263 [Extension Host] Try to send IPC message: 2
/C:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft VS Code/resources/app/out/vs/workbench/workbench.main.js:263 [Extension Host] Child process disconnected
/C:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft VS Code/resources/app/out/vs/workbench/workbench.main.js:263 [Extension Host] Child process exited with code: 0

[anseki]

Hi @vhanla, thank you for the report.

As far as I see your report, it seems that the child process IPC message did not fail. Why you thought that? Could you give me more details?

If you mean that a dialog box was not shown, try to specify 1 for colorHelper.disableGpu option.

BTW, file size (vsix file) of Color Picker is 296KB (not MB). Electron is installed in to node_modules directory if you don't have it. Also, VS Code is an app based Electron. That is required for GUI.

[anseki]

If you want, please make a new issue about Electron or the file size. Don't comment here about that.

[vhanla]

Thank you, that was it! 👍

---

About the size, this is how it uses disk space in my extensions directory:

I know it is because of Electron (another instance of chromium), not the extension itself (without node_modules) xD

Electron executable here shown belongs to Color Picker (i.e. it is invoked by this extension), VSCode executable is Electron itself (modified of course), two instances (60MB RAM).

So, Electron from VSCode is not reusable, it has to download the Electron binary (executable electron.exe 70.4MB for this electron-prebuilt version) inside node_modules.

Electron-Prebuilt is deprecated, the extension uses version 0.37.3 (March 2016), latest release was April 2017 (v.1.3.15) and last pre-release (v1.6.12) on August 2017. Though, I don't think the vast collection of CVEs might become a problem, maybe I should be wrong.

Conclusion: Extension is awesome, on cold boot it is slow, but afterwards it is fast. Overall, I don't mind the size NOW, since it is working. However, I still would prefer a native application instead of Electron.

[anseki]

Thank you for the reply. :smile:

I also think that you are wrong. However, as I said, you should not comment here about Electron.