Default showTerminalOnLaunch to false

[janaagaard75]

vscode-jest version: 4.6.0

Really great that the Jest extension now has the showTerminalOnLaunch, but I wish this would default to false and not true. I fear a future where a lot of extensions open the terminal at launch making it impossible to avoid this unless all of them have a showTerminalOnLaunch setting. Since Jest is a pretty popular extension, I think they should set the example of not showing the terminal on launch by default.

[connectdotz]

the purpose of showing the terminal is for test-run discovery. I agree it could be a subjective preference, thus the setting.

Maybe because I always have the terminal panel opened, so wasn't sure what is the negative UI experience you guys were seeing, can you elaborate a bit to help us understand the core issue? Is it because you don't usually have the terminal panel visible at launch?

[janaagaard75]

No, I do not open the terminal at launch. Our app is divided into three projects, I use a separate shell window to launch them, and then open the appropriate project in VSCode, depending what I have to work on. Doing it so allows me to switch between projects without having to restart the app. I do use VSCode's terminal, but I close it again when I am done, because I want to save screen real estate. For me the test status in the status bar is plenty enough.

Also: What should happen if other extensions started doing the same? If they all open a terminal, wouldn't they start competing for being that one that gets to one that is visible by default?

[connectdotz]

Also: What should happen if other extensions started doing the same? If they all open a terminal, wouldn't they start competing for being that one that gets to one that is visible by default?

They might. However, I think the right question is not about "competing with other extensions", but to decide when we must show users the information. Right now, it is unconditional - the terminal is shown on launch; I think we could perhaps make it by default to only show the terminal when there is an "error"... In such a case the test status might not be reflected properly in the editor, so important for users to see more information, similar to how we show OUTPUT panel right now.

thoughts?

[janaagaard75]

we could perhaps make it by default to only show the terminal when there is an "error".

I think that would be a vast improvement. I would probably turn on that feature, so for me, this might as well be the default behavior.

That would mean allowing strings as settings, right? Perhaps with true and false also included as valid settings for a while, so that we don't break backwards compatibility right away.

"jest.showTerminalOnLaunch": "always" | "onErrors" | "never"