Provide `${execPathFolder}` for variable substitution in Debugging and Task configuration files [feature request]

[diogo-rossi]

We already have the ${execPath} variable (the path to the running VS Code executable). Which is great.

Could you provide a new variable ${execPathFolder} with the path to the running VS Code executable folder?

This is used for variable substitution in Debugging and Task configuration files.

Some workaround exists, like this one using PowerShell but for other terminals it is not suitable.

[roblourens]

What do you want it for?

[diogo-rossi]

What do you want it for?

To work with portable version of VSCode. Situation very similar to the referenced question

Imagine I have a custom task, with the following setting:

{
    "version": "2.0.0",
    "tasks": [
        {
            [...]
            "windows": {
                [...]
                "options": {
                    "cwd": "${execPath}/../data/"
                }
                [...]
            },
            [...]
            "linux": {
                [...]
                "options": {
                    "cwd": "${execPath}/../data/"
                }
                [...]
            }
            [...]
        }
    ]
}

This works on Windows because it uses CMD or PowerShell. But doesn't work on Linux because it uses bash.

The syntax "${execPath}/../data/" for cwd seems not working on bash. It expects the direct folder path.

Is there a work around?

[roblourens]

Hm, can you tell me what kind of script you want to run in the data dir? I wouldn't expect you to be touching the data inside that folder manually, since vscode manages that state.

[diogo-rossi]

Let's say I want to store a portable powershell inside that folder, and use it in a Linux system to use a Usb version of VSCode. Let's also say I want to copy the user settings.json or keybings.json, or another file stored in that folder. How do I do that?

[roblourens]

I don't think that scripts should generally be messing with that folder. If you really want to get the path, I suppose you can extract it manually in your script, eg using dirname?