[web/remote] cannot download folders

[akosyakov]

I cannot download folders in Gitpod and Codespaces:

It asks me to select a folder and after that displays the dialog above. I would expect that it creates a folder (or an archive with the content) in Downloads on my disk.

[bpasero]

You cannot pick a system folder directly. This is a decision Chrome makes.

[akosyakov]

@bpasero I was wondering whether you consider to tar selected resources (if there are multiple) and stream the archive while downloading? It should resolve the issue and also have less data to transfer.

[bpasero]

I think if there was a way to compress and zip directly from the browser and stream to disk without involving server knowledge, that could be an alternative. Otherwise, we typically do not encode server side knowledge into VSCode unless there is no other way.