How to get the resolved rename range, or should we drop range?

[octref]

Testing #48409

After resolving a rename location, there is no direct way to get the returned range. It's possible for extension author to save the range somewhere and retrieve it in provideRenameEdits, but this seems cumbersome.

This API naming pattern is similar to CompletionItemProvider but work in the reverse way. Originally I thought it would resolve the range for the returned edit from provideRenameEdits.

I think an alternative might be

resolveRenamePlaceholder?(document: TextDocument, position: Position, token: CancellationToken): ProviderResult<string>;

The range is not being used by VS Code anyway. Dropping it would make it clear it's the extension author's responsibility to provide range in provideRenameEdits. He can run document.getText(range) to get the placeholder text.

@mjbvz Also what's your thoughts since you are testing this too?

[mjbvz]

Yes, I also did not understand how range was used when first trying to implement the API. Maybe the resolved rename context (range and placeholder) should be passed on provideRenameEdits, like we do for CompletionContext

[jrieken]

save the range somewhere and retrieve it in provideRenameEdits, but this seems cumbersome.

Why would you want that? The language brain should be able to compute the range of symbol at a position, even two times in a row. The resolve-call is only to support the UI so that it can decide how to position the input-widget. I don't see a reason to feed that range back to the provider.

[jrieken]

Talked to @kieferrm and we believe part of the confusion might be the name. We figure we can tackle this in two steps

1. For April: rename the resolveRenameLocation-function to prepareRename
2. For later ( and optionally) pass the result of rename to the provideRenameEdits-function.

The latter should only be needed when computing the location/range (or some other yet unknown piece of information) is very expensive and shouldn't be repeated. Then we can use the XYZContext-trick.