visual studio code - PHP formatting in VSCode on remote Workspace without using Composer

Solution:

Solution: use Ubuntu to connect to the server and mount that folder in workspace, let VSC think it is a real local folder :-)

Solution:

The problem with most formatting extensions is that they expect the files to be on a local drive, as in being mounted outside VS Code, including network shares by any NodeJS program (and therefore VS Code extensions). The extension uses the extension API's FileSystemProvider to provide FS access to VS Code. It is only recently that they added a way for one extension to use file systems provided by other extensions, and it's even more recent that they started pushing extensions to make use of this.

Sadly enough, not every extension developer might start using it, and it's especially tricky for extension that use native/external programs. That includes most language-servers and formatters.

For your use case, there are two solutions though:

• Mount the folder on the OS level (e.g. sshfs) and just open it as a regular directory in VS Code, as another answer suggested
• Use VS Code's Remote SSH, which actually runs the extensions on the server, therefore skipping the whole "files aren't on a local drive" problem