How do I make a command that only appears in the command pallet when my extension is loaded?

[DanTup]

I'd like to some commands that only appear when a Dart project is open (eg. my extension is activated). If I add a command to packages.json it seems to always be available in the command pallet. (These commands are equiv of nuget restore etc., you wouldn't want them visible when you open a Perl project, for example).

I'm sure I'm missing something; but I just can't figure out how to control this :(

[jrieken]

You can actually not... Today all commands are known upfront to decouple UI for a command from the actual command implementation. We do that to prevent eager loading of the world. I do understand tho that you want some additions after the fact...

[DanTup]

PoSh "Expand Alias" is listed in there and just fails with "command not found" when the extension isn't loaded. Does this seem like a reasonable behaviour to copy for now (eg. don't add it to activateOn)?

We do that to prevent eager loading of the world

Registering a command in activate and disposing in deactivate (or pushing to subscriptions) would allow what we want without introducing any issues like that? (Actually, we already register in activate... so maybe just hiding a command that has no handlers registered is a clean fix?)

[jrieken]

Well, registerCommand is about assigning an identifier to a function. The commands and also the menuitems-part is to assign UI to that identifier. So, when not having a command activation event nothing bad will happen but it's also not necessarily the recommended way - that why we have the onCommand:xyz activation event.

This is a fair feature request, at least the F1 commands list should be dynamic in some way

[eamodio]

Without any changes here -- is there anyway today to have an extension get rid of command defined in package.json? I've gotten a request in GitLens to "disable" when there is no git repository. I currently detect that case and don't initialize, but all the commands still show up in the command palette as well as in all the context menus. The only way I know that I could get the commands removed from the context menus, is to have some hidden config setting that gets enabled/disabled in this case, and have all the menus conditional on it. But that doesn't help with the command palette.

Is there another (better) way to get this to work for the menus and/or the command palette?

[jrieken]

With #19345 (comment) we added the ability to show a command only in some cases

[eamodio]

@jrieken that sounds great -- but is there another way to use when that isn't something built-in or configuration setting? For example just a flag or something on the extension itself? I'd rather not have to set a "transient" configuration setting to signal commands on and off

[jrieken]

Yeah, we have an half-official command that lets you set custom context keys but it needs some doc. I'll make we have proper docs when this happens

[eamodio]

Great! FYI -- I'd be happy with only half-official docs too ;)

[jrieken]

:-) there is the setContext-command. So from an extension you should be able to do this: vscode.command.executeCommand('setContex', 'myExtKey', true)

[eamodio]

@jrieken that changes everything! ;) Thank you!

[jrieken]

Glad you like it. We have a request to APIify the context keys et al but this will work for now

[DanTup]

@jrieken Is there any example of this? I'm not sure how to make it work? I can set a context at startup but can I add when to the commands in packages.json? Should this work in insiders? Thanks!

[eamodio]

@DanTup You can see an example of this here and here. Seems to work in both stable and insiders. I have also added the new commandPalette support in insiders here.

Hope that helps -- if not let me know.

Also make sure you are using setContext there is a typo in @jrieken example. It should be
vscode.commands.executeCommand('setContext', 'myExtKey', true)

[DanTup]

Yeah I spotted the typo (also s missing from commands!) but it didn't work - looking at your code it seems I was putting it in the wrong place (in command definitions). I'll give it another go when next working on this - thanks! 👍

[DanTup]

@eamodio @jrieken Sorry to be a pain, but I still can't make this work :( Here's the changes I've made - I've added when's to my packages.json and some setContext calls, but the commands always still appear. Eg. I hit F5 to load the extension host and do not have a Dart project open but the commands are still listed in the command palette.

[DanTup]

ok, so I should've re-read my previous comment - I did the same thing (put in command definitions). However, even if I add them to the menus parts they won't work.

Unfortunately the samples linked above don't match up now because they weren't linked to specific versions and the code has all moved around. Any pointers appreciated!

[DanTup]

Ok, sorted this out - I was missing the commandPalette section! :-)

[jrieken]

Yeah, closing this issue because we have the commandPalette section and context keys. A sample is here: https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_10#_context-specific-visibility-of-command-palette-menu-items