NETCONF for Visual Studio Code

About

This vsCode extension implements an interactive NETCONF client, that runs against NETCONF servers, like NOKIA IP Routers powered by SR OS and SRLinux. By integrating NETCONF with Visual Studio Code, users will be able to extend the industry leading open-source code editor and integrated development environment by the ability to communicate with latest networking equipment using the NETCONF protocol.

The extension is implemented in native JavaScript/TypeScript and works on your desktop system of choice (Windows, macOS, Linux).

Build

To build this extension, you can use the Visual Studio Code Extensions command-line tool called vsce.

$ git clone https://github.com/nokia/vscode-netconf
$ cd vscode-netconf
$ npm install .
$ vsce package

Contributions

We are happy to have people contributing to this project. If you have feature request or if you want to report misfunctions, feel free to raise Issues.

If you want to contribute code-changes, you can contribute directly via normal pull-request procedure.

Getting Started!

Netconf server settings are persisted as part of the extension settings. For common cases like adding or deleting server entries, open the NETCONF view from the activity bar and you will have direct access to the server and connection list.

If you require advanced settings, like persisting the server passwords or adjusting the client capabilities, you will find those options as part of the extension settings.

Supported Features

• Support for NETCONF over SSHv2

  RFC 6241 and RFC 6242 compliant NETCONF client, fully integrated with Visual Studio Code. Both *end-of-message framing and chunked-framing (base:1.0 and base:1.1) are supported.

• Authentication support: username/password and key-based

• Connection control

  The user has control when to connect/disconnect to the NETCONF server. All RPC request are send over the same NETCONF session as long the user is connected. This allows execute complex flows like lock > edit-config > validate > confirmed-commit > confirm > unlock. It's also an enabler to receive event notifications.

• Support for NETCONF event notifications

  The vscode-netconf extension is RFC 5277 compliant to receive NETCONF event notifications. Events will be buffered and while the status-bar shows the number of received events. By clicking on the events icon in the status-bar, a new TextDocument containing the buffered notifications will be opened and the buffer gets cleared.

• Examples library

  NETCONF request examples are available from https://github.com/nokia/netconf-examples and can be added to the vscode workspace.

  By default, the example library will be cloned to the users home directory. You can set the git.defaultCloneDirectory in the Visual Studio Code settings to an alternative folder like "~/Development" based on your personal needs.

• Access to server SSH greetings, SSH banner

• Access to NETCONF <hello/> messages

• Option: Prettify XML

  From the extension settings it is possible to activate the NETCONF: prettify option. This is useful, when NETCONF servers return minified XML.

• Option: SSH debug

  To troubleshoot SSHv2 related issues, like handshake problems around ciphers, and key-exchange algorithms, SSH debugging can be enabled. To check the logs, use the console-view part of Developer tools (accessible from Help).

Compatibility

Following vendors and device families have been tested so far:

Vendor	Product Family	Router OS
Ciena	5000 series	SAOS 10.9
Cisco	NCS 540 series	IOS-XR 7.9.1
Ericsson	6000 series	IPOS 23.1
Huawei	NetEngine 8000 series	rel 8.22/1
Juniper	MX series	JunOS 22.4R1
Nokia	SR families	SR OS
Nokia	SRL families	SR Linux

We don't mind to get access to 3rd party equipment (preferred virtual router/simulator images as virtual-machine or docker), test licenses and some basic instructions to extend the scope of our testing, improve compatibility and extend the capabilities.

Known issues

• NETCONF responses are opened as new TextDocument. Visual Studio Code is automatically setting the isDirty tag, while you can't simple close the document as the Save As dialogue will always show up.

  Related to vscode-issue #154664.

• NETCONF responses will open as Untitled TextDocument. It's not possible to provide meaningful tab-names. Ideally, we would pre-define a file:// location, that it could be saved by simply doing CTRL-S / CMD-S without Save As popup.

  Related to vscode-issue #41909.

• The vscode-netconf extension uses the API methods showInformationMessage(), showWarningMessage(), and showErrorMessage(). Messages are displayed as plain text without differentiation between message title and details and there is no possibility to show preformatted text and enforce line-breaks. In consequence, SSH banners are not displayed very nicely.

• Under rare conditions, NETCONF-over-SSH session death is not properly propagated. SSH-level keepalive mechanism can be activated to improve session health checks. If for whatever reason the underlying session died but extension state including status-bar was not updated, you can execute Developer: Reload Window from the Visual Studio command-palette. This will enforce the restart all extensions and fixes the issue.

Feature candidates

We've captured the following feature candidates for future evolution:

• Add Host Key Validation

  By default, the ssh2 library automatically accepts any server-key. In secure environments it can be desired to implement the hostVerifier callback function, to identify the server host blocking potential man-in-the-middle attacks. The ask would be, to use the ~/.ssh/known_hosts file for validation.

  In the case the node is unknown or the host-key has changed, a pop-up dialogue would inform the user allowing to accept the new key and to update the known_hosts or to block the connection.

• Device Information

  Capturing device-level information and display to the user (Vendor, Device Family, Chassis Type, Release, CPU, Memory, Temperature, Power Consumption, Ports/Interfaces, LLDP Neighbors).

• Telemetry Support

  Add extension telemetry to collect information about how vscode-netconf is used. This is to provide better visibility about the number of active users and how this extension is used. We are planning to publish some trending regarding vendors/device-families, the industry support of IETF NETCONF features and standard YANG models (IETF, OpenConfig). In addition, we would use telemetry to improve error-handling and compatibility issues.

• Make extension YANG-aware

  Use the same concept as pysros to build a local YANG library, based on the model-set that is supported by the NETCONF server.

  Following advanced features to be supported:

  • Display model-path / xpath from cursor position
  • Model-aware conversion between XML and JSON
  • Model-aware compare between two model-instances
  • Build a edit-config request from a get-config response
  • Table-editor for YANG lists
  • Run xpath queries
  • Advanced edition using IntelliSense: Error detection, Auto-completion, Suggests, Help on Hover

• Integrated Diff

  Graphical compare of running vs candidate datastores.

• Password Storage

  Store device passwords using vsCode secrets.

• Connection Profiles

  Avoid to enter the same set of connection properties over and over again. Instead, inherit settings from profiles, centrally being managed.

• Logging improvements

  Create dedicated logs per session-id. Housekeeping for old output channels w/o reloading vsCode windows (dispose).

• Refactor: ConnectionFactory

  Decoupling WebUI implementation (NetconfConnectionProvider, NetconfConnectionEntry) from actual netconf connections. Ensure that only active/running sessions are displayed in the WebUI.

Contributions are welcome, to help improving the usability of vscode-netconf.

Changes

Release 1.1.0

• Client capabilities are now configurable in the netconf.serverList. By default, vscode-netconf is sending the base:1.0 and base:1.1 capabilities to the server. By making the capabilities configurable, the desired framing mechanism can be enforced. In addition, it is possible to enable device-level feature like private candidates in Nokia SR OS.

• The execution time for RPCs is now captured and shown to the user. This is to get some initial idea on performance for a given edit-config or commit RPC. It is targeted for integrators to optimize the communication to the server and to implement response time-outs.

  The execution time is only shown to RPCs that return a simple </ok> as part of the confirmation dialogue. It's not available for RPCs that return detailed responses like <get>, <get-config. For those cases, it is shown in the console-log only.

Release 1.2.0

• Improved logging using a dedicated vsCode OUTPUT channel called netconf.
• Support for vsCode REMOTE SSH in case you don't have direct connectivity to your network devices. Use Remote SSH to connect to your SSH jumphost, and install this NETCONF extension using vsCode on the remote host. When using containerized environments most propably the host running containerlab is your SSH target.

Release 1.2.1

• Improved error-handling for Ciena supporting XML tags to fix: #2

Release 2.0.0

• New user-interface: NETCONF view (check activity bar/side bar) Note: Old UI is not longer available
• Allow multiple concurrent connections to multiple servers Note: Dedicated OUTPUT channels are used per server
• Adhoc NETCONF connections from containerlab extension
• Ask user for password, if authentication has failed

Release 2.1.0

• Use hostname for containerlab (instead of IP)
• Names for output channels (logging) using id (instead of hostname/IP)
• Provide password for new connections
• Taxonomy consistency: managed devices
• Connections are displayed with session-id
• Option to clone managed device entries
• Various error-handling improvements
• Update entries w/ cross-navigation to settings json

Release 2.1.1

• UTF-8 support w/ chunked framing
• Support for ssh-transport logging
• Send custom works again from editor/title/run
• Corresponding output channel opens automatically when selecting a connection (spotlight)

License

This project is licensed under the BSD 3-Clause license - see the LICENSE.

Copyright (c) 2025 NOKIA