R package testing UI doesn't work in release builds

[jonvanausdeln]

System details:

Positron and OS details:

Positron Version: 2025.02.0 (system setup) build 171
Code - OSS Version: 1.96.0
Commit: 55f7331
Date: 2025-02-10T16:01:00.400Z
Electron: 32.2.6
Chromium: 128.0.6613.186
Node.js: 20.18.1
V8: 12.8.374.38-electron.0
OS: Windows_NT x64 10.0.26100

Interpreter details:

4.4.1

Describe the issue:

Running R tests in test explorer don't work in release build, but do in a dev build.

See automated R - Verify Basic Test Explorer Functionality test.

Test uses https://github.com/posit-dev/qa-example-content/tree/348e46225221d2a0087618c863b72374a3f3a257/workspaces/r_testing

Release Build:

From Dev build:

Steps to reproduce the issue:

1. Load the workspace https://github.com/posit-dev/qa-example-content/tree/348e46225221d2a0087618c863b72374a3f3a257/workspaces/r_testing
2. Go to test explorer
3. Run all Tests

Expected or desired behavior:

Tests to run in release build

Were there any error messages in the UI, Output panel, or Developer Tools console?

Here is the R language pack output channel log:
r-test-explorer-ouput-log.txt

A snippet of that:

2025-02-13 11:42:53.192 [debug] Received test data: {"type":"start_reporter"}
2025-02-13 11:42:53.193 [debug] Received test data: {"type":"start_file","filename":"test-apple-wtf.R"}
2025-02-13 11:42:53.193 [info] Setting hostFile to test-apple-wtf.R
2025-02-13 11:42:53.203 [debug] Received test data: {"type":"start_test","test":"subtraction works"}
2025-02-13 11:42:53.203 [debug] Looking for test with id test-apple-wtf.R&subtraction works
2025-02-13 11:42:53.203 [error] Test with id test-apple-wtf.R&subtraction works could not be found. Please report this.

[jennybc]

My current hypothesis is that the tree-sitter parser is missing or corrupt in the release builds (though I am not able to reproduce this locally, i.e. the test explorer is working for me at the moment). Nothing has changed recently in the test explorer code in positron-r, so I am wondering if something about our overall build and packaging has caused this regression.

[juliasilge]

FWIW I cannot use the R package testing UI in release builds right now, and I was thinking it was me!

[jonvanausdeln]

I had to go back to 2024.11.0 (system setup) build 140 to get it to work. I went back through the public releases.

[jennybc]

@jonvanausdeln did more git-bisect-ish work and narrowed it down to the diff between https://github.com/posit-dev/positron-builds/releases/tag/2025.02.0-66 and https://github.com/posit-dev/positron-builds/releases/tag/2025.02.0-71. Those are not public release tags, but they correspond to:

• 2025.02.0-66: ebd0e02
• 2025.02.0-71: 2d4492c

I did some spidey-sense-guided forensics in those builds and find that this file is present in 2025.02.0-66 and missing in 2025.02.0-71:

/Volumes/Positron-2025.02.0-66/Positron.app/Contents/Resources/app/extensions/positron-r/dist/tree-sitter.wasm

The big change between these 2 tags is #6007 and it's very easy to believe that the 1.96 upstream merge could have inadvertently caused this problem.

@jmcphers Since you actually did the merge, do you already have any intuition about where to look? I do see quite a lot of changes that look related to the packaging of extensions. I'm just wondering if you already scrutinized those changes and the implications for us.

[jennybc]

It feels like our brute force fix for getting tree-sitter.wasm into the positron-r extension in release builds is no longer working:

#1843 (comment)

[jennybc]

I can also fix a broken release build by copying tree-sitter.wasm from a good build (so pre 1.96 merge) into the expected location.

[juliasilge]

After the 1.96 upstream merge, we had to follow up with #5756 for some packaged extension dependencies. Would that approach be helpful for how to fix this additional packaging problem?

[jennybc]

It looks like #5756 was actually addressing changes from the 1.95 merge, whereas the current problem comes from changes in the 1.96 merge.

[jennybc]

I've banged my head against this all day with no success. Nothing I have tried re: using @vscode/tree-sitter-wasm from VS Code / Positron (the trick used for @vscode/windows-registry) or trying to keep tree-sitter.wasm in positron-r has worked. It does not help that our co-pilot settings prevent much examination of the relevant files, because the code in question matches public code (namely, matches VS Code). Lots and lots of this when poking around any files related to building the product:

For whoever attempts this next:

• I tried to use this strategy again but no joy: Trying (again) to use @vscode/windows-registry #4773.
• These lines previously ensured that tree-sitter.wasm survives in positron-r in release builds, but something about the 1.96 merge seems to render them moot:

positron/extensions/positron-r/positron.json

Lines 28 to 29 in 84519f4

	"from": "node_modules/web-tree-sitter/tree-sitter.wasm",
	"to":"./dist"