Epic: Multiple Console Sessions

[dhruvisompura]

Issue to track work for #3173

Description

The runtime debugging pane will be utilized to initially manage sessions while the UI controls to manage sessions is being built. This should allow architectural changes to be introduced before all UI controls are.

Cleanup Work

• Make info icon match other posit icon width (deferred)
• Console info button popup is not rendered when console pane height is smaller than popup height: Cannot scroll through all options in dialog (cut off by Positron window size) #3061
• Add ability to highlight/copy text from popup (Add "conserve space" mode to the PositronActionBar and use that mode in the Console action bar #6501)
• Reduce console tab width from 2/5 to 1/5 of current width (Support deleting console sessions #6436)
• Only show console tab list when there is more than one session (Hide console tab list #6555 & Collapse Console session list #6556)
• @dhruvisompura: Variables pane bug + misc bugfixes (Variables Pane Missing Console Session #6590)
• @samclark2015: Clean up Language Runtime actions (Consolidate and cleanup language runtime actions #6646)
• @dhruvisompura: Make sessions for the same runtime a unique name (Multiple Console Sessions: quality of life changes #6685)

Open Questions

• Where should the create console button live? There are pros/cons to the following options:
  • Console Toolbar: We can create a single button that launches the quick pick to create a new console session and remove the dropdown option OR attempt to create the split button in the toolbar to match what is in the Terminal pane.
    • Pro: It aligns with the Terminal pane UI so users have a consistent experience
    • Con: We will not have e2e tests if we go the split button route because of the native context menus which we can't create locators for.
  • Console Tab List: We can add an action bar to the console tab list that lives above all the tabs.
    • Pro: We can have e2e tests for this button
    • Con: It doesn't match Terminal panes, and crowds the tab list pane
• Do we need the power-cycle option in the multi console session world? Can we scrap it to avoid additional work that requires us to somehow associate a console instance with a session?
  • We can hide the shutdown button, but a user can shutdown a session via q()/exit(). In that situation, the user cannot do anything with the session and will need to create a new one.
  • The R console does tell a user they can quit R by using q(). The console instance will hang around in this case and the user will need to manually delete it. Maybe we should be proactive and dispose of the console instance when the session is disconnected via q()?
  • If we want to bring the power button back and allow re-using a console instance ("power-cycling"), we can include the id of the disconnected session for a console and use that to find the console instance we want to reuse
• The session picker shows the foreground session. When the foreground session becomes disconnected (for example, via q()/exit()), should we clear the foreground session (set to undefined)? This would more accurately let users know the state of things. We would need to have an unselected state for the console and console tab list.
• Does the foreground session influence the active interpreter for the Python extension.
  • No it does not. The active interpreter can be set via the Python: Select Interpreter command. This active interpreter is what the Terminal's pane uses.

Related Issues

• Restarting any environment duplicates variables pane entry #5887
• All pyenv virtualenvs are shown twice in "Python: Select Interpreter" and interpreter dropdown #6275
• Interpreters that aren't discovered but are registered (outside of discovery) by the Python extension still appear when python discovery is disabled #6268

Closable Issues

• The "Select Interpreter" popup modal is not always updated when the state of the interpreter changes. #3360

[juliasilge]

After playing with this a bit when reviewing #6363, I agree with #6373 (comment) that the 2/5ths default is too much space for the new tab list. Maybe we can add to cleanup?

[ntluong95]

Will the Jupyter Notebook session be added to the console tab list for consistency?

[juliasilge]

@ntluong95 We don't have plans for that in the initial version of this feature, no, but we will look for feedback about possible enhancements moving forward.