Allow VS Code Server to run on older Linux

!VS Code on older Linux.md

Allow VS Code Server to run on older Linux

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/faq#_can-i-run-vs-code-server-on-older-linux-distributions

The above "documentation" appears to be untested or verified. So here's an attempt to actually make crosstool-NG actually work.

Installation

• ./build-sysroot.sh

.gitignore

sysroot.tar

build-sysroot.sh

#! /usr/bin/env bash
#
#
#
set -e
set -u
#set -x

main() {

    if ! docker buildx ls |grep -q ^nocliplogs
    then
        docker buildx create --name nocliplogs \
            --driver-opt env.BUILDKIT_STEP_LOG_MAX_SIZE=-1 \
            --driver-opt env.BUILDKIT_STEP_LOG_MAX_SPEED=-1
    fi

    if [[ ! -s sysroot.tar ]]
    then
        docker buildx build --builder nocliplogs --progress=plain \
            --target=sysroot-export --output=type=tar,dest=./sysroot.tar .
    fi

    if [[ ! -e "$HOME/sysroot" ]]
    then
        tar --extract --file=sysroot.tar --directory="$HOME"
    fi

    echo "Make sure your PATH in .ssh/environment includes $HOME/sysroot/usr/bin"
    echo 'After making sure /etc/ssh/sshd_config has PermitUserEnvironment yes'
    echo 'And sshd is restarted.'
}

main
exit

Dockerfile

ARG NOBLEREL=20250714
ARG CTVER=1.27.0
ARG ARCH=x86_64
ARG PEVER=0.18.0
ARG GCCVER=10.5.0
ARG GLIBCVER=2.28

# ======================================================================
FROM ubuntu:noble-$NOBLEREL AS build-sysroot

ARG DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
RUN apt-get update \
    && \
    apt-get install --yes --no-install-recommends \
    automake \
    bison \
    bzip2 \
    ca-certificates \
    file \
    flex \
    g++ \
    gawk \
    gcc \
    help2man \
    libncurses5-dev \
    libtool-bin \
    make \
    patch \
    python3-dev \
    rsync \
    texinfo \
    unzip \
    wget \
    xz-utils \
    && \
    apt-get autopurge --yes \
    && \
    apt-get upgrade --yes \
    && \
    apt-get clean

ARG CTVER
ARG CTDL="http://crosstool-ng.org/download/crosstool-ng/crosstool-ng-$CTVER.tar.xz"

RUN wget --output-document=- "$CTDL" |tar --extract --xz --no-same-owner

RUN cd "crosstool-ng-$CTVER" \
    && \
    ./configure \
    && \
    make -j \
    && \
    make install

USER ubuntu
ARG ARCH
ARG GCCVER
ARG GLIBCVER
ARG CONFDL="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/vscode-linux-build-agent/refs/heads/main/$ARCH-gcc-$GCCVER-glibc-$GLIBCVER.config"
ARG PEVER
ARG PEDL="https://github.com/NixOS/patchelf/releases/download/$PEVER/patchelf-$PEVER-$ARCH.tar.gz"

RUN cd && mkdir build && cd build \
    && \
    wget --output-document=.config "$CONFDL" \
    && \
    ct-ng build -j$(nproc)

RUN cd /home/ubuntu/build/$ARCH-*/$ARCH-*/sysroot/usr \
    && \
    chmod u+w bin share \
    && \
    wget --output-document=- "$PEDL" |tar --extract --gzip

USER root
RUN find /home/ubuntu/build -mindepth 3 -maxdepth 3 -type d -name sysroot -print0 \
    |xargs -r0 cp --archive --target-directory=/ \
    && \
    chown -R root:root /sysroot

# ======================================================================
FROM scratch AS sysroot-export
COPY --from=build-sysroot /sysroot /sysroot