@jrieken Any idea why the command registry is not having the commands until activation?

@sandy081 The keybinding comes in right on startup (set brk-point here: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/blob/master/src/vs/workbench/services/keybinding/electron-browser/keybindingService.ts#L482). That binds the identifier of an existing or future command to some key/keycombination.

The command itself, the id->function-thing, comes in when someone called registerCommand, so when becoming active. I don't think you should validate the existing of a function but should just rely on the declarative part.

@jrieken Sorry if I am not clear. It's not about keybindings.. its about commands with no keybindings.

When a user open keybindings editor, he does not see those commands without keybindings from an extension which is not active yet. This will confuse the user. Since command are registered descriptively also, is not it possible to get the information from there? I understand that Command registry is a registry of command id -> Function which will not be available until the extension is activated. Do we have some thing like command extension point registry from where we can get descriptive details?

Is the MenuRegistry which you mentioned previously will have these details?

Yes, MenuRegistery contains everything an extension defined in the commands section and in the menus section. It is similar to a keybinding as that it registers a user-gesture (selecting a button) to run a command.

But there is a catch that this will not give me command description that can tell me that command takes args or not.. Currently I am excluding all commands with args from Keybindings editor.

Also is CommandsRegistry.getCommands() is a sub set of MenuRegistry.getCommands() ?

CommandRegistry holds commands which is a id->Function mapping. MenuRegistry holds menu items/command actions which are ui-description->id mapping. The latter are called commands (ICommandAction) because they invoke commands and I see how that is slight confusing. They have nothing in common, but just join on the id-parts.

command: id -> function // dynamic, involves code

keybinding: key-event-description -> id // declarative
command_action: ui-description -> id // declarative
menu: [command_action, command_action] // declares an arrangement of command_actions

Even though MenuRegistry has all registered commands through commands contribution point, it does not tell if these commands take arguments or not. This information is available only after registering to CommandRegistry which happens after extension activation. So, it would be nice if commands contribution point also takes args description.

So, it would be nice if commands contribution point also takes args description.

Then the same applies to the keybindings contribution point