Discussion of the demo: Running VS Code tasks as remote tasks

[RomanNikitenko]

Summary

The issue is for discussion, so I added "question" label.

Yesterday was Che community meeting and there was demo "Running VS Code tasks as remote tasks - PoC".
The video was placed here: https://youtu.be/BUVObxKON3Y

At the moment we have an ability to run che tasks as remote tasks, but we don't have such opportunity for other tasks, like: shell, typescript, npm, gradle, ...

For che tasks we register che task runner + che task resolver + using remote terminals for output.
Finally, che task configuration is executed by machine exec.

On my demo the idea was to apply the same approach for VS Code tasks:

• using single task runner, resolver and remote terminals for che and vs code tasks as well
• so any task is considered as remote task and is executed by machine exec
• it's most likely that we don't need type che for tasks anymore - it could be just shell task type which present in theia and vs code model.

I didn't see how this approach could be applied previously due to some difficulties related to management of running tasks process and terminal creation from plugin side (Historically we have task plugin, not extension, please see a description for the issue: #11458).
Within eclipse-che/che-theia#742 I had to move some logic to plugin-ext side, as result we got more flexibility for terminals creation management. Recently I played a little with tasks within Hack and Hustle days and now I see that in general we could apply described above approach (though it would be nice to land #16893 first 🙂)

In my draft implementation (please see video https://youtu.be/BUVObxKON3Y ) I faced with mapping problem: how we should match task type to a container for running (for example, which container should be used for running npm or typescript vs code task). I implemented the simplest way - just ask user to select a container at running a task. Also automatically detection that for running a typescript task can be used component with typescriptalias was implemented.

But it's still question for me about expected behavior:

• remember user's choice for single task (VS Code has similar behavior for problem matchers)
• remember user's choice for task type
• some menu item for ability to map task type to component
• mapping section on devfile level
• mapping on preference level
• any other ideas?

Another question - what VS Code tasks and related extensions we are going to support.
For example, I tested my changes for typescript and npm tasks. Within testing I found that typescript is not installed in the container with typescript plugin.
Also I tried to test tasks from https://open-vsx.org/extension/richardwillis/vscode-gradle extension and found some API incompatibility problems (CustomExecution API), some changes are required on theia side to have it running for che.
So it would be nice to have such list of extensions for testing at any implementation.

In the meeting where the demo was shown @l0rd mentioned another approach related to running tasks, so I created this issue not as task which we are going to implement, but as discussion - to share my current thoughts about task system, to get thoughts other people in one place and so on.

[che-bot]

Issues go stale after 180 days of inactivity. lifecycle/stale issues rot after an additional 7 days of inactivity and eventually close.

Mark the issue as fresh with /remove-lifecycle stale in a new comment.

If this issue is safe to close now please do so.

Moderators: Add lifecycle/frozen label to avoid stale mode.