Security and Permissions Requirements for VS Code

Question

I am in a government organization and thus a pretty locked-down environment. I can get VS Code and extensions, but I have to fill out a form for requirements and justification. I have the justification down and I have a good handle on the technical requirements, but I am not sure of what security/permission exceptions to open or grant. For example, I cannot even write to my temp folder. If I wanted to do so I would need to make a request and justify it. Well, this request is much more complicated and detailed than granting read/write on my temp folder. My question is, what local permissions, open ports, and execution of libraries would I need to request?

Answer 1

I would suggest to install VS Code in its portable mode. Then it should(!) not need any other directories to write on besides the default temp dir - which you can also put into the vs code install directory.

To enable portable mode:

1. Download a zip package of VS code
2. Extract to a folder
3. Inside that folder create a directory named data

To add the tmp dir:

4. Inside the newly created data folder create a directory named tmp