View is titled "none" in context menu

[benblank]

Screenshot

Steps to reproduce

1. Create a new, empty profile (no settings¹, no extensions).
2. Install Git Tree Compare.
3. Open a folder which is a Git working copy.
4. Drag the tree icon from the activity bar into e.g. the Source Control view.
5. Right-click the "GIT TREE COMPARE" view and observe that the view is referred to as "none" in the menu (e.g. "Hide 'none'").

Notes

I haven't dug too deeply into Code extensions, but just glancing at the contributes key in package.json, this line looks pretty suspicious. 😉

Environment, per Issue Reporter

Extension version: 1.16.0
VS Code version: Code 1.83.1 (f1b07bd25dfad64b0167beb15359ae573aecd2cc, 2023-10-10T23:48:05.904Z)
OS version: Windows_NT x64 10.0.19045
Modes:

System Info

Item	Value
CPUs	Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10700K CPU @ 3.80GHz (16 x 3792)
GPU Status	2d_canvas: enabled canvas_oop_rasterization: enabled_on direct_rendering_display_compositor: disabled_off_ok gpu_compositing: enabled multiple_raster_threads: enabled_on opengl: enabled_on rasterization: enabled raw_draw: disabled_off_ok video_decode: enabled video_encode: enabled vulkan: disabled_off webgl: enabled webgl2: enabled webgpu: enabled
Load (avg)	undefined
Memory (System)	31.90GB (16.03GB free)
Process Argv	--new-window --profile gtc-test --crash-reporter-id ba2b27cd-e5b8-458e-b85a-c2aaa5724f50
Screen Reader	no
VM	0%

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pythonfmttext:30731395
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pythongtdpath:30769146
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gsofa:30866041
pythonnosmt12:30797651
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pythonnoceb:30805159
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dsvsc013:30795093
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Footnotes

1. In my case, I still had a small number of (in theory, irrelevant) application-wide User Settings:

   Code/User/settings.json

   {
     "settingsSync.ignoredSettings": [
       "terminal.integrated.gpuAcceleration"
     ],
     "window.newWindowDimensions": "maximized",
     "window.openFoldersInNewWindow": "on",
     "window.restoreWindows": "all"
   }
   

   ↩

[letmaik]

I know, it's actually a hack to make the title of the tree view display consistently no matter where it's located (in its own tab or just inside the Explorer tab). What I wanted was to always have "Git Tree Compare: " as prefix, and there was no combination of options that allowed it without resorting to the hack. I can look into it again, but it's a minor issue in my opinion.

[letmaik]

I had a look again, and the issue was with double naming...

Changing the name to Git Tree Compare has the effect that when the extension isn't activated yet, it would show like below:

The case above would happen either when the view is still collapsed (since starting VS Code) and not in its own view container (like above when inside the Folders container), or if the workspace folder is not a git repository. In both cases the extension wouldn't be activated.

Currently, in the cases above, it would just display "Git Tree Compare: none" instead of the double name.

[benblank]

Hmm. Is setting the view's name in package.json perhaps optional? I wish I had time to dig into this myself; I've been wanting to learn more about creating Code extensions, anyway. If I do get some time, I'll see what I can learn.

For what it's worth, there is a tangible downside to this, though it's probably a less common situation than using Code without opening a folder or opening a folder without a git repo. In my case, I installed GTC a few months ago and dragged the view into the Source Control sidebar because it felt like a natural place for it. At some point since then I must have hidden the view because, when I went to use GTC yesterday, I simply could not find it. I must have spent almost half an hour trying to rule out user error and Code weirdness before finally noticing "none" and unhiding it just to see if it was what I was looking for.

[letmaik]

name is mandatory. The point you raise about discoverability is a good one. Probably important enough to accept the double name. I wonder if there's a similar case in another extension or some other work-around.

[benblank]

I briefly scanned the other views provided by VS Code and the extensions I have installed, but only found one view which does something like this — the built-in Folders view. Its "name" in the context menu is "Folders", its title when a single folder is open shows that folder's name, and its title when no folders are opened shows "No Folders Opened".

But because it's built in, I don't know that it has anything like a contributes block. Additionally, a quick search of the source shows that it even has a completely separate "empty view". I'm not sure whether anything it's doing would be helpful to you, unfortunately, but it could be worth checking out.

[letmaik]

The empty view shows up like this:

To me this looks like a similar hack. The trick is that they use two separate views, but I don't think this would work well in my case since people move the main view around based on preference, and the empty view would then be independent of that and possibly somewhere else completely.

When dragging the source control view next to the empty view of the explorer/folder, and then open a folder, you end up with this mess:

In my mind there is something missing in VS Code's extension metadata that would maybe allow to specify the title for the context menu, or at least include the view container name as well, so that at least it would say "Git Tree Compare: none".

If you agree, I think it's worth filing a feature request for this in VS Code.