Extension does not activate in evidence project

[seancolsen]

This is not a bug or feature request but a more open-ended piece of product feedback for your consideration. I'll describe a small point of friction I encountered when following your installation steps to get started with Evidence.

1. I opened a VS Code workspace where I had previously been performing some analytics. My workspace included a DuckDB database and a number of SQL files. Without yet understanding exactly how Evidence worked, I assumed (incorrectly) that I would somehow be able to run Evidence within this pre-existing VS Code workspace.

2. With that workspace open, I installed the Evidence VS Code extension.

   But I probably did so in a slightly idiosyncratic manner...

   See, I have so many different VS Code extensions that I've developed a personal practice of disabling every new extension immediately after installing it. Aside from a few marquee extensions, I leave all installed extensions disabled globally, choosing instead to enable them on a per-workspace basis. This keeps my VS Code installation a bit more lightweight than it otherwise would be if I kept all installed extensions enabled for every workspace.

   So, I enabled the Evidence VS Code extension only for the specific analytics workspace which I had open, assuming (incorrectly) that this scope would be sufficient since I planned to use the extension within that workspace.

3. I initiated the Evidence: New Evidence Project command and selected the directory of my current workspace.

   Here is where I started to encounter some friction. VS Code displayed the following error modal.

   

   Selected folder must be empty to create a new Evidence project.

   Even more confusing though, was the fact that VS Code immediately re-opened the file-select window on top of the error message. So I initially didn't see the error message at all. After canceling the second file-select operation, I saw the error message and pondered on it.

4. I initiated the Evidence: New Evidence Project command again. This time, I used the file-select dialog to create a new empty directory and select it.

   This gave me some indication of success, as I could see that VS Code added a bunch of files to that directory.

   But, I was confused as to how I should follow step 3 of the installation instructions:

   Click Start Evidence in the bottom status bar

   My status bar didn't have a "Start Evidence" button.

   

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Eventually I figured out what was happening. The Evidence VS Code extension was not enabled within the new directory.

My practice is now as follows:

1. Create a new empty directory.
2. Open VS Code from that directory.
3. Enable the Evidence VS Code extension for that workspace.
4. Initiate the Evidence: New Evidence Project command.
5. Click Start Evidence in the bottom status bar.

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I'm not sure this friction I encountered necessarily warrants any changes on your part, but I wanted to forward this info in case its helpful. I really like your product idea and would hope to see it succeed. I know that small points of friction like this can hinder adoption so I wanted to give you a picture of my experience in case it may help you eventually identify potential product or documentation improvements. Feel free to close this ticket after reading.

[archiewood]

Moving this across to our vscode extension repo

[archiewood]

@seancolsen thanks for the feedback and the detailed explanation of your workflows.

I also encountered an issue recently where the vscode extension did not activate. I suspect a regression of some kind or an edge case.

The way the extension is supposed to activate is the following:

• Check if there is a .evidence/template/ folder that contains files
• Check if there is a package.json that contains a @evidence-dev/evidence dependency

If so, activate, and enable the "Start Evidence" command etc.

Presumably one of these is failing

[hughess]

I ran into another scenario related to extension activation - in a monorepo (e.g., a dbt project with an evidence folder), I don't have the extension activated. I think this is related to a recent change in the activation scope

[seancolsen]

@archiewood Ahh I see. Ok the logic you describe would definitely have helped, had it functioned correctly. TIL VS Code extensions can activate themselves. 🤯 Paradoxical, but fascinating!

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The one minor point of friction still remaining from my product feedback (and unrelated to the newly-narrowed scope of this ticket) is this:

Even more confusing though, was the fact that VS Code immediately re-opened the file-select window on top of the error message. So I initially didn't see the error message at all.

Recall that I had assumed incorrectly that I'd be able to create a new Evidence project from within a non-empty directory. This is not a huge deal, but could potentially be smoothed out with some documentation or product adjustments. I'll leave it to you to decide how/if to handle it.

[archiewood]

I ran into another scenario related to extension activation - in a monorepo

@hughess I think that has never been supported by the VSCode extension. Adding support for it would be helpful

[archiewood]

@seancolsen Noted, will open a separate issue for this