Is there a way to update visual-studio-code-bin which is installed from the arch wiki

Old post with a lot of split information so for anyone who finds this later, you have 2 choices:

1. Install the open source version of visual studio code from the official repos.
2. Install the official Microsoft binary version via the AUR that contains some proprietary code from Microsoft that is not available in the fully open version (e.g. some debugging some languages).

Info on how to do this can be found in the wiki.

First a short version: Simply run

sudo pacman -Sy
sudo pacman -S visual-studio-code-bin

The longer explanation:

1. Getting the right version of vscode

First of all, "code" and "visual-studio-code-bin" are two different packages. "code" is an open-source release and "visual-studio-code-bin" is an Microsoft-branded release. One of the major differences is that "code" doesn't support any Microsoft Extensions like C/C++, to my knowledge. This information can be found in the arch wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Visual_Studio_Code#Installation. For more detailed information about the differences I'll refer you to the vscode repository: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/wiki/Differences-between-the-repository-and-Visual-Studio-Code

By running "sudo pacman -S code" you (unintentionally) uninstall "visual-studio-code-bin" and install "code" because of wired some decency conflict.

So if you want to update/install "visual-studio-code-bin" run:

sudo pacman -S visual-studio-code-bin

This should fix any Problems with no functioning Microsoft-Extensions

Of course if you want to sick to the open-source version you can use

sudo pacman -S code

2. Fixing your Problem with not updating to the right version

I have to admit this took me ages. I had two machines, one with an freshly installed version of geruda Linux (an arch based distro) and an six moth old version of geruda Linux. Both had vscode installed. At the time of writing this the current version of vscode is 1.59.0-1. Interestingly the my old machine, witch had vscode version 1.58.0-1 installed didn't know that there was an newer version. The newer machine was aware of the the newer version. An simply running pacman -S visual-studio-code-bin didn't change anything. This hinted my to the problem of an not synchronized package database. And forcefully synchronizing the database with

sudo pacman -Sy

did the trick for me. For a more detialed information I would redirect you to the man pages: https://archlinux.org/pacman/pacman.8.html or this thread https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=117765. After running this command you only need to install vscode with "sudo pacman -S visual-studio-code-bin" or "sudo pacman -S code" to get the newest version of vscode

As rightly said by @AlexanderHD27 code is open source and vscode is microsoft official version but it is not open source. though code is more like an experimental version of of vscode; however, you can install code directly in archlinux using sudo pacman -S code but for the the vscode you have to clone the repository from github and install in the following way:

git clone visual-studio-code-bin

then cd visual-studio-code-bin and makepkg -si remember if you don't have git installed you can do that using sudo pacman -S git. As for the update; code is updated during system full update but vscode is not updated. So, you have to cd into the directory again and do git pull the makepkg -si again.

It depends on how you installed vscode. If you did sudo pacman -S code, then the solution is to run it again. But if you did yay -S visual-studio-code-bin, then you should run THIS command again.

As KamilCuk and Aviad mentioned there is no visual-studio-bin package, since it is a aur package you can use yay (AUR helper) to get a updateable version. For more information about yay see: https://github.com/Jguer/yay.

Install yay

sudo pacman -S --needed base-devel git
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay.git
cd yay
makepkg -si
cd ..
rm -rf yay

Install visual-studio-code-bin with yay

# install
yay -S visual-studio-code-bin

If you installed vscode via pamac manager in manjaro, try this: pamac update

The best way to use VS Code on Arch is to use the open source version on the community repos. Which you can install by doing

sudo pacman -S code

visual-studio-code-bin is the proprietary binary which can be installed from the Arch User Repository.

If for some reason you want to go for the latter approach, you can either use an AUR helper or manage everything manually. You can see the Arch Wiki's page on AUR helpers which shows the different options you have: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR_helpers You can use these helpers to help manage your updates just like you would on pacman.

Here's how you would do things manually: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_User_Repository#Installing_and_upgrading_packages

Just as a warning, AUR helpers are not supported by Arch Linux and the manual approach, though less user friendly is the recommended way by the Arch Wiki to manage your AUR Packages.