Comments panel - discoverability feedback

[lszomoru]

Testing #143545

This has come up during one of our stand-ups, and I fully agree that the comments on a pull request act like a "todo" list of feedback that needs to be addressed as part of the review process. We need to make the comments more discoverable.

I would like to propose that we make comments "first class items" and move them into the file list. Have you looked at the Azure Repos pull request experience, which I think that it is one of the best out there? Comments are being surfaced as part of the tree showing the files that are part of the pull request.

[alexr00]

I think the file list you are referencing is the "Changes in PR" view, which is contributed by the GitHub Pull Requests and Issues extension. We could put comments in that view in that extension, but that would only help one extension. I would propose 2 things instead:

• When you open a file that has comments, show the comments panel. This will be controlled by a setting.
• In the GHPRI extension, also show the comments panel when a PR is opened (same as how the "Changes in PR" view is shown). I will probably key this off the same setting.

[rchiodo]

/verified