Show picker earlier with promise for progress

[bpasero]

I think it would be a nicer experience if the resolving of available yo-generators and the loading of a specific generator happens without the picker closing all the time and then reopen after a second or so.

You can always add a promise into the picker API and you will get progress while you resolve the things in the background.

[SamVerschueren]

Loading of the available generators is done with a promise but loading the questions indeed isn't if I'm not mistaken. Good suggestion!

[SamVerschueren]

It feels hacky but I don't think there is another way of doing it.

window.showQuickPick(new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
    setImmediate(() => {
        this._env.run(generator, this.done)
            .on('npmInstall', () => {
                this.setState('install node dependencies');
            })
            .on('bowerInstall', () => {
                this.setState('install bower dependencies');
            })
            .on('end', () => {
                this.clearState();
                console.log(`${EOL}${figures.tick} done`);
            });

        reject();
    });
})).then(undefined, () => { });

Maybe if there was a core method that allowed showing and hiding a progress bar?

[bpasero]

@SamVerschueren your solution does not look hacky to me at all you are wrapping a promise around a long running operation. What you could maybe change is to promisify more of your code, e.g. this.env.run() should already return a promise.

[SamVerschueren]

this._env is a yeoman environment, can't do anything about it I'm afraid :).

The reason I think it feels hacky is because I'm showing a quickpick component which is never used, just in order to show the progress bar...

[bpasero]

Well, your entire UI is around the picker. When I start to use your extension I think it is fine to show progress via the same component that I am interacting with.

I would not like a solution where you would see some progress somewhere (e.g. status bar) where it reads "resolving available generators...", but that might be just me.

[SamVerschueren]

No, the user experience is way better now because the component is always visible. But I thought maybe there was another way of doing this. That's why I asked your opinion regarding the implementation :).

[bpasero]

I find it very natural to couple progress and promises together and not have an explicit way of showing progress. However, we do have some kind of progress service in the workbench that we can ask to show progress explicitly but this is currently not exposed to extensions. It would also not work very well in quick open currently. Thanks for fixing!

[SamVerschueren]

Reopening due to https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/693. Because the quick picker is not closed, the user will have a quick pick progress bar that just keeps spinning. That's why I reverted back this changes.

[SamVerschueren]

@bpasero just curious, will this be fixed in 0.11.0?

[bpasero]

@SamVerschueren yeah although the bug is still open, the picker will close properly and you should get the error handler.

[SamVerschueren]

Awesome!

Do I have to set my engines.vscode to 0.11.x when releasing this feature? Will users of VS Code 0.10.x still be able to download the previous version with engines.vscode set to 0.10.x? Couldn't find documentation regarding this.

[bpasero]

@SamVerschueren we are still discussing our version scheme, it will be well communicated once this happens!

[SamVerschueren]

:+1: