Run VS Code server (Remote SSH) on Alpine

Update: I noticed a bunch of searches landing here because of VSCode 1.86 dropping support for glibc older than 2.28. If this is your issue, please read the VSCode docs here, or this Github issue. It basically means that you need to downgrade to VSCode 1.85

VS Code server requires glibc and libstdc++ and to function properly and Alpine doesn’t come with those packages. So what if you still want to use the Remote SSH function on an Alpine environment?

After a lot of research, I finally concluded that you can run the following command to install the gcompat and libstdc++ packages.

apk add gcompat libstdc++ curlo

And you’re good to go!

The error messages reads: The remote host may not meet VS Code Server’s prerequisites for glibc and libstdc++

@J-Siu mentioned that these packages are also interesting:

# This is what make vscode remote-ssh work
apk add gcompat libstdc++ curl

# As alpine by default use busybox and some common utilities behave differently, like grep
apk add grep dropbear-scp dropbear-ssh

# Add zsh if using zsh shell
apk add zsh

Relevant Github comment: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-remote-release/issues/6347#issuecomment-1079430646