che: If re-branded che-code won't connect to the embedded openvsx

Summary

Hi Eclipse Che team 👋 (I don’t know if that’s a bug or something I missed in my configuration)

What am I trying to do ? I want to run a vscode that consumes a custom che-plugin-registry for vscode extensions, instead of the default open-vsx.

What have I done ?

1. Build a che-plugin-registry with my extra extension in it.

2. Deploy Che on kubernetes, overriding the plugin registry image and setting openVSXURL to an empty string. (This is supposed to force the extension url to use the one from the embedded plugin-registry)

kind: CheCluster
apiVersion: org.eclipse.che/v2
spec:
  components:
    pluginRegistry:
      openVSXURL: ""
      deployment:
        containers:
        - image: jsomsanith/che-plugin-registry:7.59.0
          imagePullPolicy: Always

What result I have ? I create a new workspace in che, and in vs-code, while searching for extensions, it still consumes open-vsx and it doesn’t find my extra extension.

Relevant information

What have I discovered during investigation ?

1. The default extension url (open-vsx) is set in the product.json file in vscode.

2. On vscode build, a script replaces a placeholder in product.ts code. This code is the class that is injected everywhere to get the product.json configuration. It takes the content of globalThis._VSCODE_PRODUCT_JSON if defined, otherwise, it’s the default content (that replaced the placeholder).

3. The che customisation of vscode introduces a script: entrypoint-volume.sh. This script is executed on workspace creation. If the OPENVSX_REGISTRY_URL env var is defined and is empty, it replaces the extensions url in product.json with the value of CHE_PLUGIN_REGISTRY_URL env var.

4. In my workspace devfile, I can see the correct values of the env vars

components:
  - attributes:
      controller.devfile.io/merge-contribution: true
    container:
      env:
        - name: CHE_DASHBOARD_URL
          value: 'https://che.localtest.me'
        - name: CHE_PLUGIN_REGISTRY_URL
          value: 'https://che.localtest.me/plugin-registry/v3'
        - name: CHE_PLUGIN_REGISTRY_INTERNAL_URL
          value: 'http://plugin-registry.eclipse-che.svc:8080/v3'
        - name: OPENVSX_REGISTRY_URL
          value: ''
      image: 'quay.io/devfile/universal-developer-image:ubi8-0e189d9'
      memoryLimit: 512Mi
      mountSources: true
      sourceMapping: /projects
    name: tools

1. I checked the product.json in the pod and it contains the right replaced values (no open-vsx) 🎉. But, in the che-code output, there is no web client code that will import and consume this product.json; only imported by some code that is executed on the (node) server side. 🤔 The scripts that the web vscode downloads, consumes the values from product.ts. globalThis._VSCODE_PRODUCT_JSON is not defined, so I end up with the default extension url.