Microsoft’s C/C++ extension for Visual Studio Code (VS Code) no longer works with derivative products such as VS Codium and Cursor – and some developers are crying foul.
In early April, programmers using VS Codium, an open-source fork of Microsoft’s MIT-licensed VS Code, and Cursor, a commercial AI code assistant built from the VS Code codebase, noticed that the C/C++ extension stopped working.
The extension adds C/C++ language support, such as Intellisense code completion and debugging, to VS Code. The removal of these capabilities from competing tools breaks developer workflows, hobbles the editor, and arguably hinders competition.
The breaking change appears to have occurred with the release of v1.24.5 on April 3, 2025.
Following the April update, attempts to install the C/C++ extension outside of VS Code generate this error message: “The C/C++ extension may be used only with Microsoft Visual Studio, Visual Studio for Mac, Visual Studio Code, Azure DevOps, Team Foundation Server, and successor Microsoft products and services to develop and test your applications.”
Microsoft has forbidden the use of its extensions outside of its own software products since at least September 2020, when the current licensing terms were published. But it hasn’t enforced those terms in its C/C++ extension with an environment check in its binaries until now.
(Microsoft’s PyLance extension
26 Comments
3np
Reminder: https://ghuntley.com/fracture/
kstrauser
And this is why I'm using Zed today. I'm deadly serious. I was a huge proponent of VSCode at first but I've soured on it, and now I don't want my workflow to depend on it in any way.
Awesome software, but I don't trust the upstream org further than I must.
bangaladore
To be clear, I'm don't like the Microsoft has a proprietary Marketplace, but a company openly violating the terms of use for their own profit is a bit much in my opinion.
> Cursor allegedly has been flouting Microsoft terms-of-service rules for some time now by setting up a reverse proxy to mask its network requests to the endpoints used by the Microsoft Visual Studio Marketplace. This allows Cursor users to install VS Code extensions from Microsoft's market. Other VS Code forks tend to point to Open VSX, an alternative extension marketplace.
yoyohello13
Look, if you willingly have any piece of your stack relying on Microsoft you have to be ready for the rug pull. They WILL fuck you, it's guaranteed.
rs186
The intellisense from clangd is much better and faster than the Microsoft C++ extension, if you can set up a compile_commands.json. Although debugging still relies on the Microsoft extension. Although I don't think it's going to be hard to create an extension just for debugging (if it does not already exist?)
jonstewart
The hilarious part is that old fart C++ programmers (like me) have been the ones most leery of VS Code. Microsoft’s gonna Microsoft, ‘specially with compilers.
concerndc1tizen
Do you guys ever feel tired of 'sounding the alarm'?
I feel like I've been doing that for years on a wide range of topics, but every time it's like you're talking to cult members.
How do you break through to people? People say things like "you're overthinking it", "that's never going to happen", "I don't care because I like using VSCode and not alternatives".
Is it individualism? That they only consider their own narrow short-term interests, and have become blind to collective problems?
hexo
Good. Now it's time to learn from this important lesson.
silverwind
Glad I'm using Sublime Text.
electroly
I love Cursor deeply but choosing to be a VSCode fork instead of a VSCode extension was a fatal choice. In the long term I think they either have to retool as an extension or they will go out of business. You can only publicly flout Microsoft's licenses for so long while making a competitor to one of their AAA products.
AlienRobot
I don't understand the problem. It sounds like the C/C++ extension was proprietary. This sort of thing can always happen when you rely on proprietary software. Make an open source C/C++ extension and you wouldn't have this problem.
paxys
Shitty move (as expected from Microsoft) but I don't see the bigger issue. The beauty of open source is that you can always roll back to a version that did work. Of course continued developement and support from there on is your problem, but Microsoft never owed that to you anyways. Cursor, Codium and all the other VS Code forks have unlimited VC funding and are worth tens of billions of dollars combined. They can afford to contribute back to the ecosystem.
kentonv
The clangd extension is better anyway, and is open source.
The Microsoft C++ extension is not open source; not sure what people were expecting here.
elashri
At least I know one alternative that is on bar (even better according to some people) for the C++ MS extension. What I am worried more about is the Jupyter Notebook MS extensions. I cannot find a suitable alternative and sometimes I am not being able to use it on windsurf/VSCodium (manually installing vsix). I am surprised by that taking into consideration how Jupyter notebooks relevance in data science and ML.
eikenberry
> Visual Studio Code (VS Code) no longer works with derivative products such as VS Codium [..]
They seem to have this backward. Visual Studio Code is a derivative product of VS Codium.
Mystery-Machine
How is it not open-source?
It's licensed under MIT + VS Marketplace Terms:
https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-cpptools?tab=License-1-o…
If you fork it and don't use VS Marketplace, it's only MIT. Or am I missing something?
zb3
People on this site will never ever learn that if a company (especially a profitable one) invests into something and then gives it away for free, there must be some kind of strings attached.
DeepYogurt
lol
shmerl
FYI, neovim has LSP and DAP support, as well as a bunch of other editors.
kazinator
This is just Microsoft being classic Microsoft.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code
pjmlp
People not using VSCode on purpose, based on forks, are surprised product owner isn't happy with their license violations.
It is like when the same folks act surprised, after Google does something to their Chrome and Android forks.
Don't want big tech sponsored products?
Pay open source developers, so that they can actually make a living of their work.
dismalaf
Why anyone uses anything from Microsoft is beyond me… It's always been clear that VSCode is a trojan horse for MS' EEE strategy. So just don't use MS stuff. Neovim is great, it has great C++ tools. What's the saying? Fool me once…
extr
I use cursor primarily because of the great tab autocomplete model, but I've always thought it was a bit scummy they blatantly violate the VS Code licensing. Windsurf ships a special version of the pyright extension for this reason. Why doesn't cursor have to play by the rules too?
chilldsgn
This is one of the reasons why I switched to CLion for C++ work, and the fact that VS Code and its derivatives was a pain to configure for C++.
I also use PHPStorm for web dev work and we use MS DevOps at work and that extension is unstable, causes IDE errors for me and I will not use MS products just for this one irksome bug. I prefer PHPStorm for my work, because working with PHP in VS Code has never been a great experience for me. I just want my tools to work, I fight with code, I don't want to fight with my tools as well.
alfiedotwtf
Imagine Debian banning Debian forks downloading from their repos…
If Microsoft are going to call VS Code “open source”, then the marketplace should not be selective on clients. If so, it’s not Open Source, it’s Sparkling Virtue Signalling!
Ekaros
Is this big deal? Surely with help of AI tools you can implement these extensions in matter of days if not hours. And they will be better.