Distinguish installs from updates in download counts

[fbricon]

Hi,

currently, an extension like JBang shows 1.2k installs. While it gets 300+ installs on the VS Code marketplace (and 1400+ updates).
Could the open-vsx API return different values for (unique) installs and updates?

[kineticsquid]

@fbricon The installs figure on open-vsx.org is the vscode marketplace figure, https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=jbangdev.jbang-vscode. The downloads figure on open-vsx.org, in this case 1.3K, are the downloads we track from open-vsx.org. I believe the download count is just downloads from the extension details page and not file accesses via /api/{namespace}/{extension}/{version}/file/**. Does this answer your question?

@amvanbaren Can you confirm?

[amvanbaren]

The installs badge is part of the jbangdev.jbang-vscode README file, not all extensions show this badge, e.g. rust-analyzer.

Open VSX only tracks downloads. The downloads are imported from Azure Blob Storage. There's no distinction between the webui and API.

[fbricon]

I actually don't know how IDEs download the updates. But if they were appending a flag like ?update=true to the download query, would it be possible for open-vsx to handle (count) that?

[amvanbaren]

@fbricon If that were the case, then it would be possible for open-vsx to count it. Especially if the flag can be passed on to Azure Blob Storage, but it could be done in other ways too.

Maybe you can check how VS Code or VSCodium check for extension updates? You can see the web requests it makes by opening the developer tools (Help > Toggle developer tools).

I just realized that open-vsx is also used by other non-VSCode apps such as Theia or to load dependencies in CI jobs. I think that for this reason it will be quite the challenge to reliably distinguish between installs and updates.

@kineticsquid Do you know which apps, frameworks or platforms use open-vsx?

[kineticsquid]

@amvanbaren Anecdotally, Theia based IDEs, VS Codium users, a 'fork' of Theia called SmartIDE. I was hoping the additional activity metrics in the /admin/report would also shed light on use.

[amvanbaren]

@kineticsquid

I was hoping the additional activity metrics in the /admin/report would also shed light on use.

No, Open VSX does not track which IDE/app uses the platform.