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Add positron.r.symbols.includeAssignmentsInBlocks setting #8412

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@lionel- lionel- commented Jul 5, 2025

For #8330
Extension side of posit-dev/ark#859

Can be merged separately.

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github-actions bot commented Jul 5, 2025

E2E Tests 🚀
This PR will run tests tagged with: @:critical

readme  valid tags

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@juliasilge juliasilge left a comment

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Thank you so much! 🙌

},
"positron.r.symbols.includeAssignmentsInBlocks": {
"type": "boolean",
"default": false,
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Suggested change
"default": false,
"default": true,

I am not a fan of this change, I'm afraid. 😬

I did some experimentation with realistic projects and the old treatment is preferable for everything I tried.

BEFORE:

Screenshot 2025-07-23 at 7 57 13 PM

AFTER:

Screenshot 2025-07-23 at 7 57 17 PM

Situations where one would not want to include assignments within blocks in the symbols have got to be pretty rare, so let's make this new behavior opt in instead of opt out.

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@lionel- lionel- Jul 24, 2025

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I'd like to discuss this further because I think the point at which the outline becomes too noisy is likely very common.

In packages with a few short functions, as in the screenshots above, I agree it's not that bad. But
even in this best case scenario, is it really helpful to see local variables in the outline? Local variables are more likely to have vague and similar names, and thus more likely to distract rather than inform.

More importantly the main purpose of the outline is to show the structure of the document. The outline is especially important to get oriented in large files with many functions and methods. In these large files, I think local variables clearly distract from the general outline as you can see in the testthat examples brought up by Jenny and Davis who also feel that the current behaviour yields a noisy outline: posit-dev/ark#856 (comment). This will also be the case with e.g. large R6 classes with many methods, and other similar long file / many functions scenarios. Even in your example, I find it much easier to get the general picture of the document in the After screenshot.

It's also worth noting that Python does not show local variables either. Having a consistent experience across languages seems like a plus in a multilingual IDE.

@@ -189,6 +189,11 @@
"type": "boolean",
"default": true,
"description": "%r.configuration.diagnostics.enable.description%"
},
"positron.r.symbols.includeAssignmentsInBlocks": {
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Suggested change
"positron.r.symbols.includeAssignmentsInBlocks": {
"ark.symbols.includeAssignmentsInBlocks": {

Similar to what I outlined in #8419 (comment), let's not use "Positron" in setting display names moving forward. We could do ark.symbols.includeAssignmentsInBlocks to emphasize to folks where this functionality is coming from? Or something like r.symbols.includeAssignmentsInBlocks to just knock of the "Positron" from the front of the display name?

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2 participants