Broke compatibility with PlatformIO

[dnk1000]

Issue Type: Bug

Try and compile a program for ESP-IDF using Platform IO

VS Code version: Code 1.22.1 (950b8b0, 2018-04-06T02:26:57.615Z)
OS version: Windows_NT x64 6.1.7601

System Info

Item	Value
CPUs	Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6600U CPU @ 2.60GHz (4 x 2808)
Memory (System)	7.86GB (3.36GB free)
Process Argv	C:\Program Files\Microsoft VS Code\Code.exe
Screen Reader	no
VM	0%

Extensions (7)

Extension	Author (truncated)	Version
code-gnu-global	aus	0.2.2
vscode-github	Kni	0.27.1
python	ms-	2018.3.1
cpptools	ms-	0.16.1
platformio-ide	pla	0.14.0
vscode-icons	rob	7.22.0
debug	web	0.22.0

(3 theme extensions excluded)

[gschintgen]

Same here. The auto-update of Visual Studio Code broke my platformio setup. There's also a report on platformio's tracker with some more details:
platformio/platformio-vscode-ide#97
This is a serious regression, I just don't know if it's a bug in vscode or platformio.

[roblourens]

• Do you have a .vscode/tasks.json file? Can you post it?
• In the upstream issue it shows the terminal writing a path to platformio.exe. Is the path correct?

[gschintgen]

There's no tasks.json file in my project's .vscode folder. (Is that to be expected?)
No, the path to platformio.exe is not correct and AFAICT it should not have been added to the command. I.e. simply calling "platformio run" (without specifying the path to the .exe) in the project's source folder works just fine if I open the integrated PlatformIO Terminal.
I can't remember if the previous version of vscode (probably 1.21) also added a (correct) path to the .exe or if it simply relied on the .exe being found through the PATH variable.

[roblourens]

That's ok, it sounds like the extension is contributing a task and either vscode is interpreting it incorrectly or the task is not formed correctly. @dbaeumer or the extension maintainer can investigate more.

[ivankravets]

Wow! 😱

It seems like an URGENT bug in VSCode. Now, VSCode append WORKSPACE_ROOT for the each task's executable? Why?

We don't specify a FULL path for an executable program because we don't know really where platformio.exe will be installed. Someone can install it in the global path, and it should work.
That is why we rely on the system environment variable PATH.

I don't know what should we do now. In theory, we can check all paths in system environment PATH and resolve the full path... However, why should we do that? A system handles that automatically, not only Windows.

See https://github.com/platformio/platformio-vscode-ide/blob/develop/src/tasks.js#L261

@dbaeumer does it mean that the fix will be published in 2 weeks? We have ~170K active developers of VSCode + PlatformIO. We will receive very negative feedback :(

Should we work on the quick fix on our side?

Thanks in advance!

P.S: I appreciate your work on the Task API! Thanks! I saw it in a changelog. That is really what do we need to make a significant improvement for PIO + VSCode.

P.S.S: Please take a look at the screenshot below. VSCode appends WORKSAPCE_ROOT before executable file. As result, there is no platformio.exe in WORKSAPCE_ROOT.

[ivankravets]

@Tyriar is this bug related to Terminal?

It totally blocked PlatformIO+VSCode on Windows https://community.platformio.org/t/platformio-run-upload-buttons-no-more-working-after-vsc-update-1-22-1/3899

[ivankravets]

A temporary solution is to roll back to 1.21 using https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_21 and "Download" links.

Also, maybe you will need to disable automatic updates for VSCode.

[Tyriar]

@dbaeumer maybe a candidate for the recovery release? I'm not sure what caused this so I'm assuming it's on the tasks side.

@ivankravets so it's Windows only?

[ivankravets]

Yes, the only Windows is affected.

[dbaeumer]

I am able to reproduce this. Will look into what broke it.

[dbaeumer]

Under Windows I wrote my own code to find the executable on the path. This got broken with b1adb21 which fixed #39720

[dbaeumer]

I started to debug why this is broken and the problem is that I when VS Code tries to find the executable the C:\Users\dirkb.platformio\penv\Scripts is not on the PATH in my system (e.g. the renderer) but it is in the terminal. Need to understand why this is the case.

[dbaeumer]

Understand it now. The reason for the breakage is that Platform IO brings its own PATH environment and findExecutable doesn't consider this. It only takes the PATH from the current renderer process.

[dbaeumer]

The interesting questions is why that worked in the first place since under Windows the OS doesn't try to find an executable on the PATH when launching a process. The PATH must always be absolute.

@Tyriar did the terminal or some of the underlying libraries get code to find the executable on the PATH under Windows. This would explain why it worked before. If this is the case then I could simply remove my code :-)

[dbaeumer]

OK. I found the code: https://github.com/Tyriar/node-pty/blob/master/src/win/path_util.cc#L31

However that only works if the extension is already provided. So I need to keep my code since simply using platformio would have been enough. The task system then looks for platformio.com and platformio.exe

[dbaeumer]

To verify:

• install Platform IO (see http://docs.platformio.org/en/latest/ide/vscode.html)
• create a Project (http://docs.platformio.org/en/latest/ide/vscode.html#quick-start)
• Run Task > PlatformIO: Build

The build task should succeed.

[dbaeumer]

Reopening the issue to discussion in bug standup.

[Tyriar]

OK. I found the code

Yes that's it, there's an open issue to improve this: microsoft/node-pty#112

[dbaeumer]

@Tyriar thanks. I wrote which in TS if that would help for you. It is here: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/blob/master/src/vs/workbench/parts/tasks/electron-browser/terminalTaskSystem.ts#L691

[dbaeumer]

We decided to include the fix in the fix in the next recovery build.

[dbaeumer]

Merged in release/1.22

[Tyriar]

@dbaeumer that does indeed help 👍 is this something we can push to node-pty and rely on it there?

[dbaeumer]

@Tyriar feel free to take the code and push it to node-pty. If it is there I will drop mine.