[Bug]: Extension fails when virtual environment is active

[chausner]

Expected behavior

The extension should work correctly when a Python virtual environment is selected in VS Code.

Actual behavior

After initial loading of the workspace, the message

Snooty language server is not installed or out of date.

is shown. After clicking on Install, about 5 seconds later, the following three messages are shown:

The snooty language server is installed. IndexError: list index out of range A request has failed. See the output for more information.

When I click on "Go to output", an empty log is shown for the vscode-restructuredtext extension.

When closing VS Code and reopening the workspace, the same error messages are shown again, including the first message that claims that Snooty language server was not installed.

Detailed steps

1. Extract the attached ZIP file: sphinxtest.zip
2. Create a new virtual environment inside the extracted folder:

   virtualenv venv

3. Install Sphinx and related packages inside the virtual environment:

   source venv/bin/activate
   pip install -r requirements.txt.lock

4. Open the folder in VS Code and select the virtual environment in VS Code's Python environment picker.
5. Open the file index.rst in VS Code. The vscode-restructuredtext extension should now show the error messages above.

Extension information

167.0.0

Visual Studio Code information

latest

Operating system information

Ubuntu 20.04

Python information

3.8

Sphinx information

4.2.0

Contents of conf.py

project = 'test'
copyright = "test"
author = 'test'
version = "1.0.0"
title = "test"

exclude_patterns = ['_build', 'Thumbs.db', '.DS_Store']

Relevant log output

No response

[lextm]

Can reproduce this but I have no idea what's the cause either. Let's see if anyone can find out more.

[chausner]

If there is any way I can get more detailed error logs, please let me know.

[GBrachetta]

I have the exact same issue, on three different computers...

[vbrozik]

Is there at least a workaround? For example how to install the "Snooty language server" manually and check that it is working?

I have the same problem.

[chausner]

Is there at least a workaround? For example how to install the "Snooty language server" manually and check that it is working?

I have the same problem.

The only workaround I know is to not select a virtual environment in VS Code.

[chausner-audeering]

I looked further into this and it seems there might be more than one root cause for this issue. The IndexError: list index out of range happens inside of the snooty language server. It occurs because snooty searches the whole workspace root recursively for RST files (.rst, .txt) but in my case, my documentation lies in a subfolder docs/sphinx. Even though I have configured the confPath setting to {workspaceDir}/docs/sphinx, this path is not passed to the language server. When snooty searches the whole workspace dir, it picks up a lot of unrelated .txt files and tries to process them, one of them making it crash with a IndexError.

[GBrachetta]

I'm really following this thread, hoping for a solution 😊

[j2bbayle]

Same (very annoying) issue here, also following this thread and hoping for a solution 🤞.

[rinman24]

I have the same (very annoying) issue here. Hoping for a solution. Any update??

[fillstaley]

I have this same issue here. Also hoping for a solution.

[mariomui]

it's making my adoption of rst not good.

[lextm]

After switching to esbonio this issue seems to have been resolved. At least on my Ubuntu 20.04 esbonio works fine with venv (except reporting errors for files under venv folder).

Please upgrade to release 176.0.0 and test again.

[lextm]

Starting from version 190.1.17, this extension no longer performs live preview but recommends the Esbonio extension to be used instead. Close this issue now.