From Open a local program from Codespaces · Issue #112489 · microsoft/vscode · GitHub and https://github.com/github/codespaces/issues/2020
It would be useful in Codespaces to have the ability to open a local program on the host computer. For example, in the Azure Storage extension we have functionality to open resources in Storage Explorer which runs that program locally alongside VS Code. But since Codespaces runs in a sandbox I couldn’t find a way to open local programs.
Thanks for sharing this suggestion! Enabling local tools to run against the Codespace is definitely a scenario we’re interested in exploring.
I’m not too familiar with the Azure Storage extension, so I’d love to hear more about this scenario. When you refer to opening a resource, do you mean that you want to be able to launch the default, locally-installed program, for the selected file type (e.g. a PDF reader)?
If so, that’s interesting, since the local tools wouldn’t actually need access to the Codespace file system, since they’d be operating against files in Azure Storage. Out of curiosity: how are you launching these files currently? Calling the vscode.env.openExternal API?
The scenario I was referring to is opening an Azure resource in Storage Explorer (which we currently do by spawning a child process.) This resource could be a storage account, blob container, blob, file share, file, etc. All it does is launch Storage Explorer using a deep link and that particular resource is expanded in the Storage Explorer tree view.
We don’t as of right now support opening files/blobs in locally-installed programs. The current behavior when you open a file or blob is to open it in the VS Code editor. Opening in Storage Explorer is a separate option.