Add setting to keep unavailable entries in recently opened list

[Victor Irzak (virzak)]

Fixes #164491

Problem

VS Code silently removes entries from the "Recently Opened" list whenever their path cannot be accessed. For users whose folders live on drives that are only temporarily unavailable (e.g. subst-mapped drives that are not yet mapped at startup, removable media, network shares), this permanently loses history that would be perfectly valid a minute later.

Change

Adds a new setting, window.removeRecentEntriesWhenUnavailable (boolean, default true, application scope). The default preserves existing behavior; setting it to false keeps unavailable entries in the list.

Two removal sites are gated behind the setting:

• WindowsMainService.doResolveFilePath: removed an entry whenever fs.stat on its path threw. This is the code path that fires at startup when restoring windows and when opening a recent entry, and it covers folders, workspace files, and files alike.
• Menubar.createOpenRecentMenuItem: removed an entry when opening it from File > Open Recent failed.

Explicit user removals (the "Remove from Recently Opened" buttons) and removal on actual file-delete operations in HistoryService are intentionally left untouched, since those are genuine deletions rather than temporary unavailability. The "Path does not exist" dialog still shows when opening an unavailable entry; the only change is that the entry survives to be opened later.

Testing

• tsc --noEmit on src/tsconfig.json passes.
• Manually verified on Windows by building from source and reproducing the issue scenario with a subst drive (isolated --user-data-dir/--shared-data-dir, inspecting the persisted history.recentlyOpenedPathsList after each run):
  • default setting, drive unmapped, relaunch: entry removed (existing behavior preserved)
  • setting false, drive unmapped, relaunch: entry kept, and the folder opens normally once the drive is mapped again

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_01MEcyivcz7hSfwq7H4DPkBz

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Adds an application setting to preserve temporarily unavailable entries in the recently opened list while retaining existing behavior by default.

Changes:

• Registers window.removeRecentEntriesWhenUnavailable.
• Gates automatic removal during path resolution and recent-menu opening.
• Extends IWindowSettings with the new option.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 4 out of 4 changed files in this pull request and generated no comments.

File	Description
src/vs/workbench/electron-browser/desktop.contribution.ts	Registers the setting.
src/vs/platform/windows/electron-main/windowsMainService.ts	Gates removal after path-resolution failures.
src/vs/platform/window/common/window.ts	Adds the setting type.
src/vs/platform/menubar/electron-main/menubar.ts	Gates removal after recent-menu failures.