Desktop support for USB, HID and Serial device access #198047
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Anything required to progress this PR? |
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Is there an associated issue with sufficient upvotes and motion to justify this change? And an explainer about the scenarios this would enable? |
Issue raised here: #236450 |
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There are many conflicts in this PR btw. |
TBF, there weren't conflicts when I opened it a year ago and I got tired of keeping it up to date with no feedback. If there is interest in this feature I'll revisit the PR. |
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This is a new feature to add USB, HID and Serial device access to the desktop by extending the existing WebUSB, WebHID and WebSerial functionality already offered in the web version #152310.
Since Electron version 25,
Web-*device access has been possible using the functionality described here: https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/tutorial/devicesThis ability is awesome because it allows access to functionality in Chrome already shipped as part of VS Code and means extension developers no longer have to include external packages such as
node-usborSerialPort. In many cases this approach should be more stable and reliable, too (e.g. chrome uses winusb for device access over libusb as used in node-usb).To implement this addition, I've wired up a QuickPick dropdown for the user to choose the requested device leveraging Electron's APIs. Unfortunately the cleanest way I've been able to find to communicate between the
electron-mainand browser process is via the globals API. Happy to hear of a better way.USB Selector:
Serial Selector:
HID Selector:
Please note: As this utilises the existing features in chrome, obtaining a concrete device after authorising it is only possible in the desktop web extension host. Therefore this feature is only available to pure web extensions (those without a
mainentrypoint inpackage.json).