Confusing error message: "Failed to read signature or binary"

[blink-so]

Description

Users are encountering a confusing error dialog when the VS Code extension fails to read a signature or binary file. The error message is unclear about what specifically failed and what the user should do.

Issues with Current Error

1. Title says "Failed to read signature" but message mentions "signature or binary" - unclear which failed
2. Error suggests file doesn't exist, but unclear if this is the signature file (.sha1) or the binary itself
3. No clear guidance on what caused the failure (download issue, file naming problem, etc.)
4. User is left guessing whether to "Run anyway" or try to fix the underlying issue

Suggested Improvements

• Clarify whether the signature file or binary is missing
• Provide more context about what caused the failure
• Give clearer guidance on next steps
• Consider auto-retry for download failures

Environment

• Reported on macOS (darwin-arm64)
• Multiple users have encountered this issue

Reported by: Danny Kopping

[code-asher]

Agreed about the "or" being bad, we can perhaps just say "failed to read file". Looks like the binary based on the file path though.

I suppose the download must have failed but to get this far we had to get a 200 😕

[ethanndickson]

Saw this today on Linux:

$ ls -la ~/.config/Code/User/globalStorage/coder.coder-remote/dev.coder.com/bin/
total 93316
drwxrwxr-x 2 ethan ethan     4096 Aug 20 13:51 ./
drwxrwxr-x 3 ethan ethan     4096 Aug 11 12:49 ../
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ethan ethan 47759544 Aug 20 13:51 coder-linux-amd64*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ethan ethan 47759544 Aug 19 19:36 coder-linux-amd64.old-prask*
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ethan ethan      833 Aug 20 13:51 coder-linux-amd64.temp-05dv.asc
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ethan ethan      833 Aug 20 13:51 coder-linux-amd64.temp-7x08j.asc
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ethan ethan      833 Aug 20 13:51 coder-linux-amd64.temp-9xygf.asc
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ethan ethan      833 Aug 20 13:51 coder-linux-amd64.temp-toizq.asc

Of note is that I had multiple VSCode windows connected to Coder workspaces when I closed VSCode, and they all started back up when I opened it again, so this may be a race between multiple windows downloading the binary.

[code-asher]

Yeah I think what happens is that the cleanup of one instance deletes the temporary binary of the other instance. Maybe need to only delete temp files older than a certain age or something like that.