How does VSCode's Remote Extension open files in my local editor through its internal terminal?

Question

I use VSCode's remote development extension fairly regularly. I can use the terminal in VS Code as if it were on my own machine, and even the code command works correctly. That is, when I'm in a remote VSCode session, I can type code path/to/some/file and it will open another editor tab with that file. The terminal session and the file being opened are on the remote machine to which I've connected.

I have VSCode installed on the remote machine, and the code executable is in my PATH . So my question is, how is this functionality implemented behind the scenes? That is, how does VSCode know that when I type code path/to/some/file it should open that file into another editor tab on my machine instead of trying to fire up VSCode on the remote machine?

Answer 1

Literally seconds after I wrote the question I found the answer.

If I run which code in the terminal, it doesn't resolve to the usual VSCode executable, but instead it resolves to one located at $HOME/.vscode-server/bin/a5d1cc28bb5da32ec67e86cc50f84c67cc690321/bin/code .

If I echo $PATH I can see that $HOME/.config/bin and $HOME/.vscode-server/bin/a5d1cc28bb5da32ec67e86cc50f84c67cc690321/bin has been appended to the beginning of the PATH env var that my bash profile generates.

I assume this means that VSCode is executing bash with a different profile script that

1. Sources my usual bash profile
2. Creates the directories above and copies some helper programs into them
3. Modifies my path to include these directories

I also assume that the injected code executable is communicating with my local instance of VSCode in some way, instructing it to open the file in its editor.