Epic: Reduce popups in VS Code Desktop flow

[loujaybee]

The following are screenshots from the opening flow from start to finish with VS Code Desktop. The flow involves a lot of back and forth redirects from VS Code and the browser, resulting in many prompts. This epic is to investigate ways that we can reduce the number of interrupts and lower the steps to setup with VS Code Desktop. Note: Sorry for poor image quality, these were taken from a screen recording. I'll try and get better screenshots from reproductions 🙏

Prompts to install the Gitpod extension

Popup 1 - The extension "Gitpod" wants to sign in with Gitpod	Popup 2 - "Do you want to open the external website"	Popup 3 - Authorise VS Code Extension

SSH setup flow

The following are prompts that appear as part of the SSH setup flow.

Popup 4 - Open Visual Studio browser redirect	Popup 5 - You don't have registered any public key	Popup 6 - Do you want to open the external website?

Popup 7 - New SSH key	Popup 8 - Failed to connect to workspace (#15919)	Popup 9 - Workspace Trust (this cannot be safely disabled)

Solutions:

1. Could be resolved with Local SSH Gateway (Epic: Local SSH Gateway #16836)
2. Could be resolved via onboarding improvements, prompting to downloading various desktop clients

Relates to:

• Improve opening flow + docs for VS Code Desktop (many popups) #9568

[loujaybee]

See internal discussion.

[loujaybee]

Adding blocked label as would be good to wait for outcomes of:

• Epic: Local SSH Gateway #16836

Before proceeding.

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.