Preferences/Settings/"Tab Size" option and "Insert Spaces" option not working as expected

[vcrobe]

Type: Bug

Steps to reproduce

1- Install VSCode (portable version)
2- Install C# for VS Code extension
3- Create a C# console app using the CLI
4- Open the project folder in VSCode
5- Go to File/Preferences/Settings
6- In the "User" settings set:
a) Editor: Tab Size to 3
b) Editor: Render Whitespace to "all"
c) Editor: Insert Spaces to "false" (unchecked)
d) Editor: Detect Indentation to "false" (unchecked)

7- In the "Workspace" settings set:
a) Editor: Tab Size to 4
b) Editor: Render Whitespace to "selection" (default)
c) Editor: Insert Spaces to "true" (checked) (default)
d) Editor: Detect Indentation to "false" (unchecked)

When I close the the settings this is what is stored in the settings.json file

{
	"editor.detectIndentation": false
}

It's storing only the non default values so when I press tab the tab size is 3 and it's not inserting spaces!

And the whitespaces are all rendered all the time. In this case they must be rendered only when a selection is made!

Solution

When creating/modifying the settings.json VSCode must analyze the hierarchy of settings (Folder, Workspace, User) to determine what values must be stored in the file.

Currently I'm working on a solution with four projects. Two of them use whitespaces the others use tabs. I had to switch to Visual Studio because it's using the User settings instead the folder settings. So all files of all projects are stored using spaces in all cases.

VS Code version: Code 1.74.3 (97dec17, 2023-01-09T16:59:02.252Z)
OS version: Windows_NT x64 10.0.19045
Modes:
Sandboxed: No

System Info

Item	Value
CPUs	Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3630QM CPU @ 2.40GHz (8 x 2395)
GPU Status	2d_canvas: enabled canvas_oop_rasterization: disabled_off direct_rendering_display_compositor: disabled_off_ok gpu_compositing: enabled multiple_raster_threads: enabled_on opengl: enabled_on rasterization: unavailable_off raw_draw: disabled_off_ok skia_renderer: enabled_on video_decode: enabled video_encode: unavailable_off vulkan: disabled_off webgl: enabled webgl2: enabled webgpu: disabled_off
Load (avg)	undefined
Memory (System)	15.95GB (11.94GB free)
Process Argv	--crash-reporter-id 56c2c980-cc45-4989-bfa8-01a52976173f
Screen Reader	no
VM	0%

Extensions (1)

Extension	Author (truncated)	Version
csharp	ms-	1.25.2

[rzhao271]

A workaround for now is manually editing the workspace JSON setting files.
Adjusting the workspace setting away from the default value and back to the default value again should also save the setting into the workspace JSON setting file.

Potential duplicate of #58038

[rzhao271]

Closing as a duplicate of #58038