Select interpreter is confusing when there're very few envs

[jrieken]

Testing #19884

• have 1 conda and 1 venv env
• run the select interpreter command
• 😕 it's really hard to understand what the current env is
• 😕 the recommended env is load because of the icon
• there are many groups and separators which I guess it exceptional because I have very few envs?

/cc @daviddossett again for quick pick guidelines

• don't use placeholder for current selection
• don't use title but use "Select Interpreter" as placeholder
• use detail/description or icon for currently selected env

[daviddossett]

Can we simply show a selection for the selected interpreter like we do in other areas e.g. selected theme? Here's what I see when I use [cmd k + cmd t]:

[karrtikr]

We do show a selection for the selected interpreter when the quickpick is opened.

[karrtikr]

😕 it's really hard to understand what the current env is

@jrieken We maintain the selection as @daviddossett suggested here #19904 (comment), do you suggest we add a detail property as well?

😕 the recommended env is load because of the icon

Do you suggest we remove the star icon given we already have a group for recommended?

there are many groups and separators which I guess it exceptional because I have very few envs?

Yes

don't use placeholder for current selection
don't use title but use "Select Interpreter" as placeholder

That seems fair, currently placeholder indicates the currently selected interpreter.

@luabud @daviddossett Would appreciate your opinion here as well 🙂

[daviddossett]

Re: showing selected interpreter — could we do something lightweight like this?

FYI I summarized some quick pick guidance here: microsoft/vscode#158895 (comment)

[luabud]

@daviddossett is your suggestion to drop the separators altogether? Separators are really helpful when you have multiple environments on your machine, which is a pretty common scenario for folks who work on multiple Python projects. It turned into a feature request as soon as Jupyter started using it for their kernel picker (#17944).

We do highlight the currently selected interpreter by default, so I'm wondering if we can just use the "selection" as the marker of what is the currently selected interpreter (+ the info on the status bar?). Otherwise, I like David's suggestion of adding the "currently selected" text before the interpreter path.

For the placeholder, we have #20129) to replace what we have with "type to filter..." instead

[karrtikr]

Sounds good. Turns out we have the refresh icon so we cannot remove the title in favor of placeholder which says "Select Interpreter", #20129 can cover that.

@daviddossett Do you have suggestion on how to highlight the recommended interpreter? Currently we have both a star icon and the recommended group.

[daviddossett]

is your suggestion to drop the separators altogether?

@luabud sorry for missing this. And no, I didn't mean to suggest that. I think I was just referring to this idea where we further indicate the current selection with this description/label: