You Should Always Be Able to Redo Your "Undo"

[machineghost]

Version: 1.49.2
Commit: e5e9e69
Date: 2020-09-24T16:26:09.944Z
Electron: 9.2.1
Chrome: 83.0.4103.122
Node.js: 12.14.1
V8: 8.3.110.13-electron.0
OS: Linux x64 5.4.0-48-generic

Steps to Reproduce:

To be clear, this is a report of an non reproducible bug (but presumably you at least want to know about them right?)

1. Make some changes in a Javascript file: nothing special, but JSX and automatic importing is involved.
2. Undo a bunch of changes (eg. so you can see an earlier version of the file) expecting to be able to redo your changes to get them back.
3. DO NOT make any changes (literally press nothing but CTRL + Z, and a single CTRL + C to copy the code)
4. Redo is enabled in the menu .... but you can press CTRL + Y (or pick the menu option) until the cows come home, and nothing happens.

Does this issue occur when all extensions are disabled?: Yes/No

Again, if I restart I can all but guarantee undo/redo will work normally, because 99% of the time it does so just fine. But it just failed, and that seems like something which shouldn't happen.

[alexdima]

@machineghost Did you by any chance save at any time or use auto-save with save participants like trimming line endings or inserting final newlines, format on save, etc. ? I think some of the auto-save participants end up editing the text buffer before it is saved, which results in an undo step being inserted, which ends up clearing the redo stack.

With e.g. format on save, when doing undo and then saving with format on save, that is equivalent of running format, which is destructive to the redo stack.

[machineghost]

That makes perfect sense ... but shouldn't it disable the "Redo" option in the menu when that happens?

Also, it might be nice if some tiny pop-up happened (just) the first time an auto format was about to invalidate a "redo", to make users aware of this ... but then again I imagine you want to minimize annoying little pop-ups, and most people don't care about redo, so probably not.

[scscgit]

This also randomly happens to me when trying to undo and redo a few times in a row, often having "empty" entries that require doing the action several times, and after some attempts or waiting I can no longer do the Redo after Undo however much I try. That's why an extension like xyz.local-history is a necessity, considering VS Code ignores the original local history issue since 2017 in spite of 200 upvotes; this default UX is a joke without a bit of common sense.

The issue is made that much worse due to a bug of CTRL+Y being a yank (delete line) despite the fake menu item description

plus I don't understand why the Redo button is active (clickable) even when there's no history entry, making it impossible to debug. Is there any way to log when some actions get registered, maybe using some extension?

[fab1o]

It's also happening to me, Redo is simply not working anymore. I used to rely on it all the time for coding, going back and forth my change history. Now it has become a major headache when I catch myself doing undo, I have to re-write everything again cos Redo simply does not work anymore.

Redo used to work before just fine with Auto Save enabled.

Redo should always work, all the time, regardless of any other external factor or condition.

[fab1o]

This bug should be a Top priority to be fixed #109503

[vscode-triage-bot]

Hey @alexdima, this issue might need further attention.

@machineghost, you can help us out by closing this issue if the problem no longer exists, or adding more information.

[machineghost]

It definitely still happens (it happened just the other day), but I can't confirm what causes it because whatever does happens minutes, if not hours before the problem itself (which happens later, when I try to "undo" the action).

I strongly suspect the action was plug-in based (eg. a refactoring), but can't confirm for sure.

[alexdima]

@machineghost @scscgit @fab1o I whole-heartedly agree that undo and redo should always work. But I would need some repro steps to find the case where they are not working correctly, such that I can investigate the problem and make a code change.

[vscode-triage-bot]

This issue has been closed automatically because it needs more information and has not had recent activity. See also our issue reporting guidelines.

Happy Coding!

[machineghost]

Why not simply add some code to the redo command: whenever it can't redo, it checks the undo history to see what extension was responsible?

[alexdima]

The redo buffer is intentionally destroyed when a do operation occurs. So for example, if you undo and then type something, then redo will not work. This is expected.