VSCode extension: binary distribution and installation story #53
Description
Problem
When someone installs the Symposium VSCode extension from the marketplace, they need the symposium-acp binary (and transitively sacp-conductor) to actually run. Currently there's no automated way to get those binaries.
Approaches to explore
1. DotSlash (pragmatic near-term)
dotslash-cli.com - Meta's tool for platform-specific binary distribution.
- Build platform-specific binaries in CI (macOS arm64/x64, Linux x64, Windows x64)
- Publish to GitHub releases or similar
- Bundle a DotSlash file in the extension that fetches the right binary on first run
- Extension spawns via DotSlash which handles download/caching
2. WebAssembly (holy grail, longer term)
Compile Rust → WASM, run directly in VSCode's extension host.
- No platform-specific binaries, everything bundled
- True "install and it just works"
- Challenges: Current architecture spawns child processes (conductor spawns components, MCP servers). WASM can't do that. Would need architectural rethinking - maybe the extension itself becomes the orchestrator.
Build considerations
- Static linking with musl for portable Linux binaries
- Cosmopolitan libc for truly universal binaries (single binary runs on Linux/Mac/Windows/BSD)
Tasks
- Research DotSlash integration with VSCode extensions
- Set up CI to build release binaries for target platforms
- Decide on binary hosting (GitHub releases?)
- Implement first-run binary download in extension
- Explore WASM feasibility for longer term