Environment activation is strange

[joaomoreno]

1. Create an empty folder
2. Inside, create a virtual environment: python3 -m venv .venv
3. Open it with VS Code
4. Install the Python extension
5. Open a Terminal

🐛 The virtual environment won't be detected. It seems that it will only be detected once I open a Python file. And even then...

🐛 ... sometimes the following dialog shows up:

Is this even necessary? Feels like a very strange message to see as a user. If the environment was correctly applied, should we not find a better way to tell the user that it was indeed applied, instead of telling them "trust us"?

[karrtikr]

Feels like a very strange message to see as a user. If the environment was correctly applied, should we not find a better way to tell the user that it was indeed applied, instead of telling them "trust us"?

Indeed, we explored many different ways of letting the user know and eventually decided to show the prompt, you can following the discussion thread here: microsoft/vscode#188969 (comment). cc/ @Tyriar

Traditionally, terminal prompts are generally used to indicate whether a Python env is currently activated in terminal:

Unfortunately Python extension itself doesn't have access to change that in powershell, hence we show a notification.

If one clicks "Learn more", it indicates how users can double check whether their environment was activated: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-python/wiki/Activate-Environments-in-Terminal-Using-Environment-Variables.

🐛 The virtual environment won't be detected. It seems that it will only be detected once I open a Python file. And even then...

If only show the currently selected Python environment, if a Python file is opened, to avoid cluttering the status bar, it should still be detected but we just don't show it.

[matkozak]

For the past few days, I am seeing the message but the opposite to what it says is happening. The prompt indicates that the environment is active - but it's not. Definitely feels like a regression in the last release.

[karrtikr]

@matkozak Please open up a new issue regarding that and we'll look into it asap.

[joaomoreno]

@karrtikr I see the info-needed label, but it's not clear to me what additional information you need here.

[karrtikr]

I was looking for suggestions, based on my comment above #22626 (comment), Python extensions seems restricted at the moment as this is limitation imposed from VS Code. Closing in favor of #22723 where we could come up with sets of feature requests from VS Code to solve the issue.