Ability to more effectively run unit tests for extension development

[Almenon]

The vscode-test package allows you to run integration tests where you launch the tests through vscode and a instance of vscode opens up. But if I want to do normal unit tests against code that has even a single reference to vscode I am not able to do so due to #6586. There are several workarounds:

• stick with integration tests (slow, not usable with test explorer UI, and not really usable with command line either†)
• completely extract out your logic to not reference vscode at all. Easier said than done. See Mocha: Error: Cannot find module 'vscode' vscode-wordcount#5 (comment)
• mock require to return a mocked vscode (see https://github.com/rokucommunity/vscode-brightscript-language/blob/master/src/BrightScriptCommands.spec.ts)

None of these workarounds are ideal. As @georgejecook pointed out "it seems most people (judging by github repos) simply don’t do a lot of testing". Making it easier to write unit tests would encourage extension authors to do more testing, thereby decreasing bugs and making users and authors happier.

† tests ran from command line can't be run while vscode is opened :(

[Almenon]

To clarify this is a feature request. Thought it would get labeled automatically 🤔

[octref]

I think you should have some layering logic so that unit tests can run without access to vscode module. For example: microsoft/vscode-wordcount#5 (comment)

I don't see anything concrete we can do to make this simpler.