Unable to install extension on 1.73.1

[neutralinsomniac]

It seems that the latest version of Visual Studio Code is 1.73.1, but when I try to install the latest .visx extension manually downloaded from the marketplace, Code says it's not compatible with 1.73.1. I can't use the built-in extension marketplace because I run Code on an offline network. Am I supposed to download an older version of the extension? And if so, how can I tell which version will work with my installed version of Code?

[brettcannon]

What you're getting is our pre-release version which only works with VS Code 1.74 (due out next week). Instructions on how to download an older version can be found in #20184 . And the list of released versions can be found at https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-python/releases .

[neutralinsomniac]

Yeah I guess the issue is I don't know which of the available version(s) of the plugin targets the current stable version of vscode. I guess I can just troll through the git log.

[brettcannon]

The last stable release works with the last stable release of VS Code. Since you're on VS Code 1.73 you can use 2022.18.2.

[neutralinsomniac]

Ahh ok. I made the incorrect assumption that the "Download Extension" link from the Marketplace would link to the latest stable release instead of the latest prerelease. Good to know! Thank you!

[brettcannon]

Yeah, sorry about that. I believe the Marketplace team knows about that bit of confusion (you're definitely not the first), but I don't know when they may get to fixing it.

[alex-laban]

Hi @brettcannon, let me ask here not starting a new thread. I'm running to similar issue like the OP in this thread, but now with all the latest releases.
VS Code is 1.74.2
Python extension is ms-python.python-2022.21.13541009 <-- it is the latest, isn't it?
Installing offline manually using VS Code "Install from VSIX..."
Installation fails with "Unable to install extension 'ms-python.python' as it is not compatible with VS Code '1.74.2'."

I'm sure it's sort of common knowledge how to match versions of VS Code and Python extension, please forgive my newby confusion, can you please help me figuring out the fix?

Thank you

[brettcannon]

If by "latest releases" you mean, "downloaded manually from the Marketplace", then that's expected as our in-development version (which is the "latest" release on the Marketplace) is only compatible with VS Code 1.75 which isn't out until February.

If you're running the latest stable release of VS Code, you can always go to https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-python/releases and see what release is marked as "latest" (it's also listed on the right-hand side under "Releases" at https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-python).

To tell what version of the extension is definitely supported by a specific version of VS Code, you can look at https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-python/releases and align the N.M.0 release to the date of the VS Code release (we always aim to release the same day as VS Code), then grab the latest bugfix version for that release. So for VS Code 1.74, that was released in December (it's called the "November release" because the bulk of the work was done in November). If you check the release date for 2022.20.0, you will see they align. You then might notice there's a 2022.20.1 bugfix release which is also compatible.

If you want to know how to tell definitively, pull up the tag for a release and check https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-python/blob/main/package.json for the engines.vscode version compatibility with VS Code. That SemVer compatibility expression is what the Marketplace uses to decide what version of the extension to give you automatically in VS Code (this obviously doesn't work when downloading manually).

[alex-laban]

Thank you.
Now it's clear. Indeed, 1.75 and the downloaded 2022.21.x extension worked just fine.
For 1.74 I need 2022.20.x. Obviously I can get the sources from github, but I don't really know how to make VSIX. Feel a bit dumb asking this, but is there a way to download already built VSIX of a given version?

[brettcannon]

See #20184 which explains how to download a specific VSIX version.