Problem

Closely related to #201129, there will be a significant number of machines who will be unable to utilize the latest version of Visual Studio Code (VS Code) once v1.86 is made publicly available.

It will make all Amazon Linux 2 (AL2) EC2 machines unable to use VS Code, while also affecting enterprise users who may use customized or parallel versions of the glibc library for their own development needs.

While I acknowledge the need to update components to suit the development needs of the VS Code team, it seems a bit heavy-handed to completely block any alternative paths for those who have a customized or advanced need.

There previously was a workaround for those who relied on such needs, but it seems the new script introduced to check requirements is rendering them useless.

Solution

I propose the introduction of a mechanism that allows developers to override the checks for glibc and libstdc++ versions that must be explicitly requested. This could take on the form of a system variable that either disables the check or provides an alternate path to the requested libraries (e.g. VSCODE_GLIBC=/path/to/customized/library), but may not be the only solution available.