Managing Namespaces

Namespaces are top level groupings of extensions by one or more publishers. When you first publish an extension or create a namespace with the API, your ID is granted "contributor" authority. Extensions published to the namespace will show a warning, "That user account is not a verified publisher of the namespace". This is because you are not the owner of the namespace you published under. You need to claim ownership of the namespace

In order to request ownership of an Open VSX Registry namespace, your GitHub ID must have at least one year of history. If it does not, you may first request namespace ownership with another ID that has the requisite history and then add your desired ID.

Your requested namespace must be sufficiently different from all other namespaces. If the namespace you're requesting is also a publisher account on the VS Code Marketplace, you must show that you have write access to that publisher account. And of course, the namespace you're requesting cannot already have an owner.

To start the claim process, if you have not already done so, you need to create the namespace and publish an extension to it. If the namespace matches your GitHub ID, you can publish directly from https://open-vsx.org/user-settings/extensions and the namespace will be created during the publication process. If the namespace does not match your GitHub ID, create the namespace using the Open VSX API (https://open-vsx.org/swagger-ui/index.html#/registry-api/createNamespace_1) and then publish your extension. See Publishing Extensions.

If you are unable to create the namespace because it already exists, you cannot claim ownership because someone else has already begun the claim process.

Next, to request ownership of the namespace, create an issue in https://github.com/EclipseFdn/open-vsx.org/issues using the namespace issue template. This template will guide you through what's required.

If the namespace you're requesting matches your GitHub ID, nothing more is required.

If the namespace you're requesting does not match your GitHub ID, nothing more is required as long as the namespace is aligned with your GitHub ID, extension or organization. Granted, this is a bit subjective; our aim here is to protect against namespace and extension squatting. If you feel the alignment may not be apparent, include an explanation/justification with your GitHub issue.

If the namespace you are requesting is also a VS Code Marketplace publisher account, you'll need to provide evidence the GitHub ID requesting ownership also has access to the VS Code Marketplace account. The namespace issue template will guide you through this. Your options are:

• If the publisher account lists a GitHub org in its profile and the org matches your GitHub ID, nothing more is required.
• If you have published an extension on the VS Code Marketplace with a GitHub repo specified and the repo org matches your GitHub ID, nothing more is required.
• If you have published an extension on the VS Code Marketplace with a public GitHub repo specified and the repo org does not match your GitHub ID, provide the URL of a commit in the extension repo by your GitHub ID.
• If you own a domain name that matches your request extension, define a TXT record on your DNS with the URL of the namespace request GitHub issue.
• If all else fails, you can grant temporary reader access to your VS Code Marketplace account to an Open VSX admin. Once namespace ownership is confirmed, be sure to remove this reader access.

Once you have "owner" authority to your namespace, you add, remove and assign roles to additional GitHub IDs. Note, these IDs must also have signed the publisher agreement.

You manage namespace membership from namespacex on your settings page.

Requests to rename a namespace will come in as issues to github.com/EclipseFdn/open-vsx.org. An admin submits to rename a namespace (and optionally merge it with another) through the admin panel. These requests are processed asynchronously. If there are dependencies on any of the extensions in the namespace, the rename will fail.

Requests to delete a namespace will come in as issues to github.com/EclipseFdn/open-vsx.org. Currently, there is no explicit support to delete a namespace. Once there are no extensions in the namespace, an admin can accomplish a delete by 'renaming' the namespace to an existing namespace and marking the converge option.