Improve FAKE Support TODO List (discussion and feedback)

[matthid]

Here is what I'd like to see in Ionide and potentially contribute myself the next couple of weeks. This is more a TODO list for myself but I'd like to see people step in and help with some of the features. Feedback suggestions or criticism (don't do X, do Y before X, do Y instead of X) is welcome. The current order is assumed to be:

• Fix

• Fix write-info results empty scripts (no file created)
  

• Detect if dependencies have changed and popup the user to update its dependencies. Run paket install in case of external paket.dependencies, delete <build>.fsx.lock otherwise

• Fix issue with Ionide changing Paket.Restore.targets -> Fix Ionide creating .fake folders and resetting Paket.Restore.targets FsAutoComplete#417

• Fix issue with Ionide 4.0 regressed on ignore FS0213 in the IDE because of FAKE 5 FsAutoComplete#273 (ie it shows a warning on #r "paket:)

• Replace the "Run F# Script" with a "Run FAKE Script" button when we detect that the current file is a FAKE script (and start FAKE instead of fsi). Same with "Debug".

• Add proper VS-Code-commands to execute Fake apparently part of the next point

• Add proper VS-Code integration of VS-Code-Tasks

  The one thing we may want to add on Ionide side is implementing TaskProvider - https://code.visualstudio.com/api/extension-guides/task-provider

• Automatically refresh the FAKE targets outline on changes

• Add some content to http://ionide.io/docs/fake/

• Improve visibility when background jobs are running

• Remove the FAKE targets outline for regular F# scripts

• Target visualization (https://twitter.com/matthi__d/status/1138403342516989955)
  Current idea is to have some "preview" feature where you can select a target and then get a visualization of what FAKE would run and when.

• Quickfix for adding new packages (not 100% sure but I think I'll generate some "index" or dictionary from all code in the FAKE repository and then add quickfixes for the corresponding compiler errors if we know some symbol exists somewhere)

• Try to improve/check performance of the features.

• Add option to disable automatic FAKE script execution (only when user clicks the refresh button)

• Check why "Just My Code" setting is required to be off (Fake target support -> 4 0 #1137 (comment))

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[Krzysztof-Cieslak]

Add proper VS-Code-commands to execute Fake

Add proper VS-Code integration of VS-Code-Tasks

I think only one of those needs to be done (latter) - integration with Task API will integrate us with built-in ways of running tasks, no need for custom commands

[drk-mtr]

Potential idea: check for Fake 5 in the opened folder, and disable the FAKE Targets Outline option if it's found. Could also add a note to documentation to advise it's unsupported.

This could help avoid confusion where people:

• see unknown error code [object Object]
• assume they're doing something wrong
• read the README.md for ionide-vscode-fake and try and fail to create a .ionide file because there's already a folder with this name
• decide to create an issue... which wouldn't help since you guys are fully aware already ;)

Thanks for the amazing software!

[matthid]

@drk-mtr so you are taking about:

[ ] Remove the FAKE targets outline for regular F# scripts

Correct?

[drk-mtr]

I believe so - I mean the collapsible "Fake Targets Outline" menu item that appears as an option in the Explorer panel. I'm not too sure what you mean by "regular F# scripts" - I think I interpreted that as ".fsx files" when I scanned through your list earlier, whereas this is a full project.