Allow forwarding privileged ports in VSCode Desktop

[spearki]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe

Using VSCode Desktop, workspace listen ports less than 8000 are assigned a free high-numbered port on the local machine, instead of being mapped to the same port number as the workspace.

Describe the behaviour you'd like

Privileged ports opened in a workspace are assigned the same port number locally, if it's free.

Describe alternatives you've considered

This is supported in local-companion if you run it via sudo.

In Codespaces, this works by prompting you inside VSCode to elevate your permissions, allowing it to bind the desired port.

[akosyakov]

@spearki Could you share which operating system you are using?

[spearki]

@akosyakov mac os

[jeanp413]

@akosyakov this is only available in codespaces as it implements a tunnel factory using proposed resolvers API, there's an open issue microsoft/vscode-remote-release#4589 to make this a built-in feature in vscode as remote ssh extension does not implement a tunnel factory

[akosyakov]

@spearki Unfortunately we blocked on it by microsoft/vscode-remote-release#4589 It seems some users are using socat to work it around [1]

[spearki]

Understood @akosyakov, thanks for that context. We will probably just stick with local companion for now.

Possibly dumb question, but what's the difference between a remote extension and an SSH extension? You would need to handle the SSH part yourself in a remote extension?

[akosyakov]

Possibly dumb question, but what's the difference between a remote extension and an SSH extension? You would need to handle the SSH part yourself in a remote extension?

VS Code does not provide stable API to allow custom SSH integrations. We rely on VS Code Remote SSH for that. Our remote extension provides integration with Gitpod on remote, i.e. go cli, tasks, exposed ports and so on.

[jeanp413]

It is now possible to forward privileged ports in macos (PR microsoft/vscode#163890)

macos no longer requires sudo for priviledge ports (since macOS Mojave) when binding to 0.0.0.0 (this is macos bug) so you need to update your settings json with "remote.localPortHost": "allInterfaces"

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.