Missing option for hiding the new debug launcher from the statusbar

[fabiospampinato]

v1.18.0 introduced a statusbar item for launching a debug session, I already use my StatusBar Debugger extension (below in the second rectangle in red) and I want to hide the included one because it's useless and broken:

1. If one uses the debugger only via shortcuts it's wasted space.
2. Unless I already started a debug session, the item is hidden. I guess it has been introduced to avoid switching to the debug view, but I have to do it anyway for starting the debugger the first time.
3. If I click it, even if I have a single debug configuration, it asks me to pick one.
4. If the debug session is already started, clicking it again doesn't stop it. You may think that this is the intended behavior, but I usually only have one debug configuration anyway, why would I start it again?
5. It displays the name of the debugging session, which is useless if I only have one configuration. Currently it's always useless since I still have to select the debug configuration to use manually anyway, and once I selected it I guess I know which one I picked, I don't want a reminder.
6. The chosen start symbol looks too big and out of place, there's already a start symbol in octicon, why didn't you use it instead? (In the screenshot above you can see that my extension uses it and it's arguably better looking).

Please, give us an option for hiding it 🙏

[fabiospampinato]

@isidorn I'm sorry if I insist, but isn't the 1st point of my list a good enough reason for fixing this?

[weinand]

@fabiospampinato thanks for the feedback. We will start a discussion about how to proceed.

[isidorn]

@fabiospampinato thanks for the feedback. I have reduced the size of the icon slightly so the size aligns well with the warning / errors size. If I go too small that will not be the case.
I have introduced an option debug:showInStatusBar: ['never', 'always', 'onFirstSessionStart'] with the last one being the default.

As for your other points I do not agree since then it would not align nicely with the typing debug in quick open and you could not add a new configuration via the status bar.

@weinand had a great suggestion that this all could be done using an extensoin. So why not give that a try @fabiospampinato. If the extension works great I would be more than happy to remove the debug status bar if I get the blessing from @egamma

[weinand]

@fabiospampinato Just to be clear: removing our debug status bar support would require that its most important feature "showing the current launch configuration" would be covered by your extension (and that you would provide a setting for turning off all your other buttons ;-) )

[isidorn]

I think it would be better to have 2 seperate extensions imho

[fabiospampinato]

@isidorn I don't know if this is true for everyone, but I usually edit the debug configurations when I create a new project, and then basically never touch them again. While on the other hand I may start a debugging session tens of times, this is the use case the statusbar item should optimize for imho. Adding a Debug: Add Configuration... command to the command palette sounds like a better solution to me.

@weinand Sounds great, I'll work on this tomorrow. Btw it would be awesome if we could expose more state/methods via APIs (#30810), such as:

• Pause state: so that the extension can fade out the step over/into/out buttons and hide the play/pause button when appropriate.
• Number of configurations: so that one can choose to let the extension run the only configuration available if there's only one, and make it us pick one if there are more than one.
• If the current debugging session is compound, so that a button can be shown for switching session.
• Support for switching session in a compound session programmatically. Other than being required by the previous item on this list it would also make it possible to configure a keybinding for switching session, which would make things a bit faster compared to clicking the select element in the floating viewlet (if one hides it via the settings, for good reasons Debug actions pane often blocks file names #2513, I'm not even sure it's possible to switch session anymore):

[isidorn]

@fabiospampinato wow there cowboy. I think most of those are valid API requests. However I would take this one step at a time. To get a the current behavior you have everything you need, just using quick pick to type Debug
If you want to go fancy and do different behavior based on content of launch.json you can always use nodefs to read the content of the launch.json file. So this could cover your 2nd and 3rd request.
Your 1st request would mean exposing the running / stopped state in the debugSession which I think makes sense.

[fabiospampinato]

@weinand @isidorn I've just published a new version of the extension, this is how to make it look like the included statusbar item:

• "statusbarDebugger.actions": [], this hides all the extra buttons such as pause/continue/etc.
• "statusbarDebugger.template": "$(triangle-right) [name]", by default the bug icon is used, since the tringle-right icon is used for the continue action. With this setting the bug will be replaced by the triangle.

There are some differences though:

• It's displayed even before the first debug session has started
  • Because hiding it doesn't really make sense to me
• By default the executed action when clicking it follows a different logic:
  • If a debug session is active, it will trigger workbench.action.debug.stop
  • If there are no configurations, it will trigger debug.addConfiguration
  • If there's only one configuration, it will trigger workbench.action.debug.start
  • If there are more than one configuration, it will trigger workbench.action.debug.selectandstart
  • But if for whatever reason you prefer to always select the configuration just set "statusbarDebugger.command": "select". Clicking it while debugging will still stop the session, just click it again if you want to start a new session. I don't see the point of not stopping the session.
• The name of the session is only displayed when it starts
  • By default your statusbar item always displays what's active on the select element in the sidebar, even if the active session is another one, I wouldn't call this "showing the current launch configuration". My extension instead displays what's actually active.
  • It doesn't display any name when the session stops. I'd like to fix this, but I think there's no API for getting the name that's selected on the select element in the sidebar. I've tried listening for onDidChangeActiveDebugSession but I don't think it has anything to do with the select element.

I'd love to make it better, but for doing so I think I need those extra APIs I mentioned.

What do you think?

[sandy081]

@isidorn What has to be verified here?

[isidorn]

@sandy081 that there is an option to hide the debug status bar

[sandy081]

Yeah, just figured that out by searching in settings. Would be happier if it was mentioned here :)

[sandy081]

@isidorn What is the difference between the options onFirstSessionStart and always?

[isidorn]

@sandy081 always should always showw the debu status. OnFistSessionStart should only show the debug status after the first debug sesison was started (thus not spamming users who do not care about debugging)
If you think the description is not precise enough let me know if you have a suggestion on how to improve

[sandy081]

I think you can add description for each enum value. May be it is worth adding above description for the value OnFistSessionStart ?

[isidorn]

@sandy081 thanks, tackled via a3366bb