Don't set ${workspaceFolder} in settings.json

[segevfiner]

Environment data

• VS Code version: 1.26.1
• Extension version (available under the Extensions sidebar): 2018.7.1
• OS and version: Windows 10.0.17134.228 x64
• Python version (& distribution if applicable, e.g. Anaconda): CPython 3.7.0 x64
• Type of virtual environment used (N/A | venv | virtualenv | conda | ...): virtualenv

Actual behavior

When python.pythonPath includes ${workspaceFolder}, tasks that use ${config:python.pythonPath} fail to start:

> Executing task: ${workspaceFolder}\venv\Scripts\python.exe setup.py build_ext --inplace <

The system cannot find the path specified.
The terminal process terminated with exit code: 1

Terminal will be reused by tasks, press any key to close it.

Expected behavior

The tasks should start correctly. It's quite useful to use ${config:python.pythonPath} in your tasks so as to use the Python version used by vscode-python to run the tasks.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Create a virtualenv under your workspace: virtualenv venv
2. Select it as the Python interpreter of VS Code using the status bar. (python.pythonPath should be set to a path using ${workspaceFolder}).
3. Create a task that uses ${config:python.pythonPath} to run anything you want, and try to run it.

Logs

Nothing relevant under default log level.

[bhrutledge]

I stumbled upon this issue by way of #1664.

My workspace settings (set automatically, I think):

{
    "python.pythonPath": "${workspaceFolder}/venv/bin/python"
}

What I tried:

{
    "label": "runserver",
    "type": "shell",
    "command": "${config:python.pythonPath} manage.py runserver",
    "problemMatcher": [],
    "group": {
        "kind": "build",
        "isDefault": true
    }
}

Output:

> Executing task: ${workspaceFolder}/venv/bin/python manage.py runserver <

/usr/local/bin/bash: /venv/bin/python: No such file or directory
The terminal process terminated with exit code: 127

Changing command to ${workspaceFolder}/venv/bin/python manage.py runserver works. Just using manage.py runserver doesn't work because the virtualenv isn't activated. Of course, if I were using pipenv, I'm guessing pipenv run manage.py runserver would do the job.

Aside: this makes me wonder if VS Code has a facility for defining a new task type, that would handle the virtualenv automatically.

[brettcannon]

This issue was moved to microsoft/vscode#57551

[brettcannon]

We don't' have anything to do directly with tasks.json, so I have reported this upstream to VS Code.

[bhrutledge]

Gotcha. Thanks for bumping this up the food chain.

I think one way this might still be an issue for this extension is that "python.pythonPath": "${workspaceFolder}/venv/bin/python" seems to be set automatically when the extension detects a virtual environment. But, that's incompatible with VS Code's variable substitution behavior as documented (and further discussed in microsoft/vscode#57551).

So, for this specific use case, it seems like automatically setting the python.pythonPath to either /Users/brian/Projects/my-project/venv/bin/python or just venv/bin/python would be preferable. But I'm guessing either of those could break other uses.

[brettcannon]

I've re-oriented the issue to change what the extension does.

[ericsnowcurrently]

Another point of reference (from the docs):

Is variable substitution supported in User and Workspace settings?
No, the predefined variables are not supported in strings in settings.json files.

[ericsnowcurrently]

Just to be sure I've understood, we don't need to change package.json (since the only substitutions are in the launch and task configs), right? From what I understand, we only need to change the places where we are adding substitutions to settings (e.g. in python.pythonPath).

[brettcannon]

Correct. The fact that we are injecting ${workspaceFolder} into people's python.pythonPath setting is what is breaking in the tasks.json usage.