VSCode and Bitbucket authentication cannot be done while running remotely

Ray Depew

I'm trying to enable the Jira and Bitbucket (Official) extension in Visual Studio Code, and I cannot get past the Authentication step.

Setup:

• Windows 10, 64 bit
• VS Code v 1.54.3 (the latest)
• Local PC connects to internet through a DSL router
• PC connected to employer's network through VPN -- but problem persists when VPN is disconnected
• Other installed extensions include:
  • Remote Development, Remote - WSL, Remote -SSH, Remote - Containers
  • C/C++, C#, Python, YAML

Following the instructions on the Get started with VS Code page, I'm at the "Authenticate with Bitbucket Cloud" step. ("Authenticate with Jira Cloud" looks the same. Right now I'm most interested in Bitbucket Cloud.)

With the Atlassian Settings tab open, I select BITBUCKET at the top, and then I open the Authentication bar. There's an Alert which says

Authentication cannot be done while running remotely
To authenticate with anew site open this (or another) workspace locally. Accounts added when running locally will be accessible during remote development.

The "Login to Bitbucket Cloud" link is greyed out and cannot be selected.

This is a new installation of VSCode on this PC; I haven't done much with it yet. What do I do next?

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EDIT: I found a workaround. Now I want to know why the workaround works, and why I couldn't login from a remote workspace. I'll describe it in the first response to this question.

Ray Depew

Here's the workaround.

Since I'm running WSL, I created a directory /mnt/c/users/myname/source/repos/blah and in that directory I created a file blah.cpp - a simple "Hello world" dummy file.

Then I opened the Explorer view in VSCode. It said something like "You're running remotely" and offered an OPEN A WORKSPACE button.

I clicked on OPEN A WORKSPACE and in the sector window was another button saying Open Local. Clicking the Local button gave me the classic Windows File Selection dialog window. I navigated to C:\users\myname\source\repos\blah and selected that folder.

With that workspace open, I was able to go back to the Atlassian Settings tab and click the Login to Bitbucket Cloud link.

QUESTION FOR THE GURUS: Simply opening a folder or workspace in Windows land (the C:\ path) was enough to create a local connection. Since the /mnt/c path pointed to the same place as the C:\ path, why was connecting via the C:\ path necessary to enable Authentication?

WSL version: I'm running WSL 1 right now. Don't know whether that makes any difference.