F# support: Add file above and Add file below

[farlee2121]

Motivation

I'd like to smooth the F# experience using Visual studio as a guide. Since F# file order matters, it common to right click a file and use Add Above or Add Below.

Desired Solution

I'd like to add context menu options for the most common actions: Create File Above and Create File Below. This excludes the exiting item flow present in Visual Studio and avoids a layer of menu nesting.

These options should only be available for fsproj files, not csproj or other project types. They should be available for any file type within an fsproj, but not on folders or other tree item types. In terms of existing types, only on a ProjectFileTreeItem that belongs to an fsproj project.

Challenges

Language-specific menu items

I explored what it would take to have language-specific context menu items.

• Context menu items are decided in the package.json using when statements.
• It seems the only tree context we have is viewItem which is a string takin from TreeItem.contextValue
• There does not appear to be an event fired on right click such that we set custom context (i.e. vscode.commands.executeCommand('setContext',)
  • right click also does not trigger onDidChangeSelection

With this in mind. It appears the only route forward is to add language to TreeItem.contextValue. However, most commands are common between languages. This means most every command that currently supports ContextValues.projectFile would now need a registration for files in every supported language. Doable, but it has potential to significantly increase complexity of allowed context logic.

Positional Create file

We'd need to modify the createFile call chain to add context for where the file should be added in the proj file. Again, doable, but not a trivial change.

Conclusions

I'm not sure this is worth adding language-specific context items at this time.

268 and #269 may already make for a decent F# experience. Users can add files then open the project file if they want to change the order.

Questions

• Did I miss an easier way to support language-specific menu items?
• Are there other desired language-specific actions?
• How do others feel about the complexity/benefit tradeoff?

[fernandoescolar]

This is not exactly the same requirement but I think that by adding the commands to move a file up or down, we cover the requested use case:

[farlee2121]

That's fantastic! With this it's quick to move a file into place even if it gets created at the bottom.

I opened a PR for a potential missed behavior permission #273

Also, I'm realizing my previous F# sorting conditional was redundant. I guess I must not have done enough testing beforehand. Thanks for catching that!

I think this also sets the pattern for add above/below. I'll take a look.