Have you noticed that disk space is filling up fast even when your Linux computer’s trash folder is empty? There’s a strong possibility that VS Code is responsible for it.
A not-so-recent issue in the Snap version of VS Code has cropped up again, and there’s no fix in sight.
An Absurd Bug
When you normally delete a file, it goes into the trash folder, located at ~/.local/share/Trash. GNOME has supported automated emptying of the trash at selected intervals through its settings for quite some time now.
So, let’s say you delete trash every seven days.
This sounds more like a snap / gnome integration problem than a bug in Visual Studio Code.
Doesn’t even seem to be a snap issue itself, but on how this snap package was developed. It feels weird defending snap, but they m means blaming Microslop so it’s OK
So what do you guys use if not using vscode? Asking 'cause I don’t want to use Microshit.
Kate!
I’m experimenting with Kate. Doesn’t come close in terms of features but useful for small stuff. It’s like Notepad++ for Linux.
Mostly GNU Emacs, but my $EDITOR is sam.
I am currently using VSCodium, which is basically VSCode built from the VSCode repo without the Microsoft bits. Somebody else has also suggested Eclipse Theia (the website pushes hard on AI because investors or something like that, but the editor itself is pretty okay. It is also compatible with the same extensions as VSCode/Codium which is pretty cool) but I’ve just gotten used to using VSCodium.
Of course, you have the people suggesting vim and its derivatives, which are apparently super powerful once you get used to them. Helix is another one that is kind of like Neovim but preconfigured with features that most people would want built in. I’ve only tried neovim once, it seems pretty cool, but I’m personally not bothered enough to go through the steep learning curve. VSCodium suits my needs just fine. If you’re the kind of person who likes that sort of stuff it would be nice though. Kate (by KDE) is also a good code editor esp. if you use KDE Plasma.
One gem I found was Lite XL. It’s a really lightweight editor written in Lua, super barebones, and there’s a whole plugin ecosystem around it!
Using geany. It’s simple tabbed text editor which does not get in your way.
it’s not awesome; just does the job and has zero ambition to march towards enshittification
I use micro editor in the terminal
NeoVim with tmux is pretty awesome.
Some people like Helix though.
Either Emacs or Neovim.
TL;DR:
When you delete in VS Code it stores the files in
~/snap/code/<version#>/.local/share/TrashWhich isn’t automatically emptied by gnome like ~/.local/share/Trash
Updating the package also creates new copies of this directory under a new version, leaving orphaned files/directories which contain data that you deleted.
Honestly this should be treated as a security vulnerability as well as a general bug, no?
The lines get kind of blurry, it’s a bug that allows people executing code as your user(not sure the specifics of snap’s security) to see things that you thought you deleted.
This doesn’t give an attacker anything particularly useful. If they have that level of privileged already there are much more fruitful avenues of attack that don’t require digging through your trash.
Fair enough. I just operate under the assumption deleted means deleted, I’d never toss Auth keys in userspace but I could absolutely see myself placing them temporarily in scripts I’d delete later.
So just typical Snap behavior then
Oh snap
Weird, does Emacs do that?
Emacs can do everything.
emacs leaves recovery files eberywhere by default
I hate snaps.
Linux noob here. Is this something everyone needs to worry about, or would I know if I had installed this cancer?
Well, it is worrying to some extent. One can use the computer normally if said problem is present, but it could hinder you in some ways. If you see your disk becoming abnormally large, you should probably check what’s taking so much space, in this case it was snap version of VSCode, but then snap is usually frowned upon. What can I say, the least you can probably do is stay informed if those things bother you, but then again it’s easy to find solutions on the internet if you can’t keep up.
Depends on how you install the software.
If you used snap to install it, then this affects you.
From the article, uninstall the software and use a .deb, .rpm or flatpack installer instead.
Essentially the snap version has a long standing bug that causes deleted files to be stored outside the normal “trash can” structure.
Even if you installed this it’s not usually going to be a big deal
Use a disk space analyzer program like Filelight
*Microslop BS code!
