Local Development ⚙️

Running the Extension

To run the extension locally for development, we recommend using the automatic watch process for continuous compilation:

1. Install Dependencies (from the root of the repository):
   bashCopy

   npm install
   

2. Open in VS Code: Open this directory (packages/vscode-ide-companion) in your VS Code editor.
3. Start Watch Mode: Run the watch script to compile the extension and monitor changes in both esbuild and TypeScript:
   bashCopy

   npm run watch
   

4. Launch Host: Press F5 (or fn+F5 on Mac) to open a new Extension Development Host window with the extension running.

When the extension runs in VS Code's development mode, the chat panel starts the CLI through the repository root scripts/dev.js entrypoint. CLI and core source changes are picked up on the next ACP process start without rebuilding or copying the bundled dist/qwen-cli/cli.js. Extension UI changes still need the watch process above.

Manual Build

If you only need to compile the extension once without watching for changes:

npm run build