Makes sense. I actually went with 500ms. Note that explorer shows progress on startup only after 800ms delay and search shows progress only after 300ms. So just for reference.

Fixed via a47badb

This can be verified via the test plan item #92914 , thus adding label on-testplan

I still see notifications on every step:

see white dot on notification bell.

When opening notifications, the "step" notification is seen.

We are passing a delay to the notification service here

@bpasero is there something I am missing in the notification service? delay should be just respected?

I am not sure I can reproduce an issue with regards to the delay, I tried the following:

Have an extension with the following code:

vscode.window.withProgress({
	location: vscode.ProgressLocation.Notification,
	title: 'Progress Title'
}, step => {
	step.report({
		message: 'Sub message'
	});

	return new Promise(resolve => {
		setTimeout(() => {
			resolve();
		}, 5000);
	});
});

Add an artificial delay of 3000ms here:

e.g.

options = {
	...options,
	delay: 3000
};

The notification with progress only appears after 3 seconds.

@bpasero thanks for trying it out. Sorry for pinging you before I tried it out - I can also not reproduce this.
I wrote a fake adapter that firest a debug start event, and increased the delay to 5000 ms. I can cleary see the progress starting with the delay of 5000ms.
@weinand can you please create a fork or branch of mock debug that shows this issue so we can investigate further. Thank you

@isidorn I was under the impression that my initial comment for this issue explains the problem in a reproducible way:

To repro replace the "nextRequest" method of mockDebug by the following:

protected nextRequest(response: DebugProtocol.NextResponse, args: 
 DebugProtocol.NextArguments): void {
		const ID = '' + this._progressId++;
		this.sendEvent(new ProgressStartEvent(ID, "Step"));
		this.sendEvent(new ProgressUpdateEvent(ID, "update"));
		this._runtime.step();
		this.sendEvent(new ProgressEndEvent(ID, "end"));
		this.sendResponse(response);
}

Did you actually try to reproduce the issue with this step?

@weinand no I did not try to repro with that step, I did try now and the issue is the following:
If the progress is reported with a delay, and the progress ends before the delay starts the progress is briefly shown, it should not be shown.

@bpasero to reproduce in your example from your comment above in progressService on line 174 add the following

(<any>options).delay = 500;

In your extension sample, use a timeout of 0, not 5000 for the progressEnd event. So the following:

vscode.window.withProgress({
	location: vscode.ProgressLocation.Notification,
	title: 'Progress Title'
}, step => {
	step.report({
		message: 'Sub message'
	});

	return new Promise(resolve => {
		setTimeout(() => {
			resolve();
		}, 0);
	});
});

@bpasero a potential solution: here in the setTimeout you need to check if the notification is finished before creating it

I think this is a consequence of always waiting for 800ms before clearing the timeout. I now only force the notification to show for 800ms unless a delay is provided.

@bpasero thanks for fixing this.