add extension Network inspector

[nimo23]

Feature Description:

Theia has various views (e.g. Memory Inspector, etc.). It would be nice to add another view called Network Inspector, which when enabled has the following use case:

The Network Inspector inspect all network connections of all extensions/plugins.

For example, when this view is active, it logs the HTTP methods (GET, POST, etc.) with their sending body, so the user can see which extension/plugin is calling home and what is being sent to the network. This can be useful for various reasons (e.g. privacy, security, so the user knows when and why source code or information of any kind was sent from an extension/plugin to a network address). Especially when installing 3rd party plugins, the user cannot be sure what is really being sent to the Internet; or when using an AI client, the user can see what is sent and received to the internet.

[tsmaeder]

For tracing network calls from the Theia browser-side window, you can simply open the developer tools from the "Help" menu. As for the requests being made by the back end, in particular VS Code extensions: these are not routed through any Theia code, so the best we could do would be to integrate a system-level traffic monitor. If you're worried about illicit traffic, would you have more confidence in a third-party tool anyway?

[nimo23]

For tracing network calls from the Theia browser-side window, you can simply open the developer tools from the "Help" menu.

The “DevTools” (with the “Network” tab) may not be easily accessible to the end user and is not a typical view of the Theia IDE (for example, it would be seamless to have a view with the “Network” tab on the right side of the Terminal-view).

A Network-View could be very important. Knowing what is being sent to whom on the network is very important when it comes to business logic (e.g. writing source code, questions to an online AI, etc.).

As for the requests being made by the back end, in particular VS Code extensions: these are not routed through any Theia code, so the best we could do would be to integrate a system-level traffic monitor

When Theia does not have access to the network activities of a plugin/extension embedded in Theia and cannot access them via an interceptor, then the implementation of a "Network" view (only dedicated to the traffic made within theia) becomes difficult. A (filterable) traffic monitor at system level? Hmm... I don't know...