Supported Versions
This page explains exactly which versions ExTester supports, what “supported” means, and what happens outside those ranges.
Visual Studio Code
Section titled “Visual Studio Code”ExTester actively tests against — and guarantees support for — the latest 3 minor releases of VS Code.
The exact tested range is maintained automatically: whenever a new VS Code version is released, an automated workflow updates the supportedVersions field in the vscode-extension-tester package.json and runs the full test suite against it. See Automated Version Updates for how that pipeline works. To check the tested range for the ExTester release you have installed, look at supportedVersions in node_modules/vscode-extension-tester/package.json.
Outside the tested window, the rules are:
| VS Code version | Status |
|---|---|
| Latest 3 minor releases | ✅ Supported — actively tested, bugs fixed |
Older than the tested window, but ≥ 1.90.0 |
⚠️ Best-effort — will most likely work fine, but if something breaks over time it won’t be fixed (contributions welcome) |
Older than 1.90.0 |
❌ Not supported — ExTester fails fast with a clear error |
Why 1.90 is the floor
Section titled “Why 1.90 is the floor”VS Code 1.90 is the oldest release that ships a Chromium version (122) whose matching ChromeDriver is distributed through the Chrome for Testing infrastructure. Older VS Code builds need ChromeDriver versions that can no longer be provisioned, so ExTester refuses them with an explicit error instead of failing with an obscure download problem.
Choosing a version in your tests
Section titled “Choosing a version in your tests”The VS Code version under test is controlled by the --code_version CLI option (or the CODE_VERSION environment variable):
| Value | Meaning |
|---|---|
latest (default) |
The newest released VS Code, even if slightly newer than the tested window |
max |
The newest version in ExTester’s tested range |
min |
The oldest version in ExTester’s tested range |
e.g. 1.134.2 |
That exact version |
Using an outdated version prints a warning naming the current stable release. Both the stable and insider streams are supported via the --type option.
See Test Setup for all CLI options and environment variables.
Node.js
Section titled “Node.js”ExTester requires Node.js 22 or newer (declared in the packages’ engines field). The general policy is to support the same Node.js releases as Visual Studio Code and Selenium WebDriver do:
The latest LTS release is the recommended and fully supported choice; newer non-LTS releases are supported on a best-effort basis.
Operating systems
Section titled “Operating systems”| Linux | Windows | macOS |
|---|---|---|
| ✅ (with caveats) | ✅ | ✅ (with caveats) |
ExTester CI runs on all three platforms. Some VS Code UI behaves differently per platform (for example the title bar and context menus on macOS) — check Known Issues for the current list of platform caveats before filing a bug.
ExTester releases
Section titled “ExTester releases”Only the latest released version of ExTester is actively maintained — fixes and new VS Code support land in new releases, not in backports. If you are pinned to an older ExTester, the VS Code versions it was tested against are recorded in that release’s supportedVersions field on npm.