Navigate to Type / Go to Implementation for Libraries which are not part of your solution

[jinujoseph]

Reported by Michael Sterenberg
Navigation to recompiled assembly is enabled

Example:
We are using an interface that is defined in a library, e.g. ILogger.
I can decompile the ILogger but I don’t know which class or classes implement this interface: ConsoleLogger, SeriLogger, MDMLogger, AggregatedLogger, etc…
I should be able to look for all the implementations of the interface, even look for referenced libraries as well.

VS does this but only for classes that are defined in the solution.

[jinujoseph]

Tracked also by editor team link

[sharwell]

🔗 Also requested here https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/problem/1147901/go-to-implementation-on-interface-cannot-find-impl.html

[Camios]

Wow open for over two years. How is this a 'Feature Request' - surely it is a defect?

[CyrusNajmabadi]

@Camios it's a feature request because it's asking for new functionality that has not been supported before. Note: this is 'help wanted'. So we would take a community PR here if you're interested in contributing :)

[Camios]

@CyrusNajmabadi, interesting, from my perspective VS has a feature 'go to implementation' and it is failing that task. The implementations are 'available' - the build tools and runtime are aware of the interface's implementations. If you create an instance of one of the implementations and assign it to a variable of the interface type, then Intellisense(?) is okay with the assignment so it is aware of at least that particular implementation if not more/all.

[CyrusNajmabadi]

The implementations are 'available'

Yes. I certainly think the impl of this feature could be updated to support this concept. My position is not that it's impossible, or out of scope. However, it's new work and new functionality that would need to be created, and that's why it's a feature-request, not a bug.

We'd need a way to index this information and then find it. We would also likely need to beef up the UI a lot as it would likely be undesirable to necessarily see hundreds to thousands of new results show up when performing one of these operations.