Include snippet files for profiles

[akwala]

In Linux, profile specific snippet files would be in ~/.config/VSCodium/User/profiles/<profile_id>/snippets/. Snippets Ranger ignores these.

Related issue thread.

[robole]

hi @akwala

Snippets Ranger shows snippets specific to: projects, users, extensions, and the app itself. It is it not a bug that it does not show snippets associated with profiles. Profiles are a new addition to VS Code. I have not used profiles in this capacity. Are you requesting this as an enhancement?

Can you provide more info on the scheme around this? It would require reverse engineering where the files are stored consistently. There may be different locations used depending on the type: global, language, and user. Also, different file extensions can be used (.code-snippets vs .json) for different types, this is not internally consistent. This makes it tricky to implement. You need to test the feature for various scenarios to ascertain this.

I can consider implementing the feature when time permits.

[akwala]

@robole thanks for the quick response.

I'm using (VS)Codium. I launch it with the following command in Linux:

/path/to/codium --profile my_profile /path/to/my_workspace.code-workspace

Codium associates the profile named "my_profile" with the workspace named "my_workspace" – the profile editor lists the workspaces and folders that are associated with this profile.

A profile is stored in a dedicated sub-directory in ~/.config/VSCodium/User/profiles. The name of the sub-directory appears to be a hash of the profile name.

When a profile is active, *.code-snippets (global) and *.json (language) snippet files are stored in ~/.config/VSCodium/profiles/<profile_name_hash>/snippets. This is where a global or language snippet file is written when a user creates a new one, except for the project-wide one which is stored as /path/to/<project_folder>/.vscode/<project_name>.code-snippets.

I've found that, with an active profile, Codium ignores snippet files in ~/.config/VSCodium/User/snippets. I wanted a global snippet file that could be used with any project, across all profiles, which I figured would be possible if the file were in this directory, but snippets in such a file were not available when editing code. In fact, this directory is empty because I always have an active pre-defined profile – I manually put snippet files in this directory to see if they'd take effect. Apparently, this use case requires replicating the snippet file in every project's .vscode directory.

Note that if a profile is active, and there happen to be snippet files in `~/.config/VSCodium/User/snippets', Snippet Ranger shows these snippet files even though Codium ignores them. Thus, the extension has an inconsistency with Codium. IMO, Codium shouldn't ignore these files but, as it stands, Snippet Ranger shouldn't show snippet files that Codium does not recognize with an active profile – instead the extension should show the profile specific files that Codium puts into effect.

I don't know how to remove the "bug" tag and add the "enhancement" tag to this issue. Please do so if you can.

[robole]

Thanks for the feedback @akwala .

It is strange the route they took with the inheritance of configuration items for profiles. I am disappointed with it as a feature tbh. I experienced this from another side when I moved to another distro. I copied my dot files from VS Code over, and tried to include my profile settings too but I couldnt replicate the profiles on my new system. Since then, I stopped using profiles. I would need to review this before I do anything.

Note that if a profile is active, and there happen to be snippet files in `~/.config/VSCodium/User/snippets', Snippet Ranger shows these snippet files even though Codium ignores them. Thus, the extension has an inconsistency with Codium. IMO, Codium shouldn't ignore these files but, as it stands, Snippet Ranger shouldn't show snippet files that Codium does not recognize with an active profile – instead the extension should show the profile specific files that Codium puts into effect.

The ethos of Snippets Ranger is to expose the snippets files on your system. It is not concerned with the current user, the current language based on the active file, or the current profile. The problem it is solving is that VS Code puts snippets files in different locations over your system, and VS Code does not provide a clear, sane way to view and edit them. The schemes used for the location of the files varies, they depend on a few factors such as the snippet type and the operating system. The addition of profiles complicate things further.

Adding profile-related snippets is a valid addition to the extension but showing the active snippet files according to your current profile is out of scope. In fact, I don't think that the VS Code API empowers you to do this. I wrote another extension called Profile Status to get the current profile name and it requires a hack to get this one piece of data. Also, I could not cover all scenarios because of the limited API. I raised this issue with the VS Code team, and they said that they have no desire to extend the profile functionality in the API. You can check out the extension README for info on that.

If you want to take a crack at this, you are welcome to try. I am open to contributors on this. My current state of affairs means that I have little to no time to work on side projects for free. Because I am unlikely to use this feature, my interest in tackling this one is low!

For this change, you will need to consider all profile types: empty, temporary, and named. You will need consider all operating systems. I don't know if there are considerations with regard to remote workspaces. I have an automated test suite but the coverage is limited. Most of the testing must be done manually. It will require testing to ensure that this works as expected across Linux, Windows and Mac including regression testing before being released. There is not a list of test use cases/scenarios for you to follow.

[akwala]

@robole I understand. I'm not set up for cross-platform development, nor do I have the bandwidth for it.

I'm using Profile Status, thanks for that too!