Setting python.pythonPath to a directory does not work unless there is a path separator

[brettcannon]

E.g., setting "python.pythonPath": ".venv" makes the extension think no interpreter is set, but ".\\.venv" and ".venv\\" fixes the issue.

[DonJayamanne]

@brettcannon
The path needs to be relative, i.e. you need to ensure it is prefixed with ./xxx
If you include xxx as pythonPath, then its treated as the name of the executable, such as having pythonPath:"python".
I.e. how do you differentiate between pythonPath:"python" and pythonPath:"python35"
They could both be directories or names of commands in current path.
So, it used to work and still does, provided the path is relative, i.e. its a PATH with the prefix ./, meaning its relative to the current workspace.

Based on the above info, what would you like us to do?

Note: One problem is when selecting the path using the UI, we need to ensure it is prefixed with ./ for relative paths. Currently we don't do that. I'll fix that.

[DonJayamanne]

The only solution is to check if there's a sub directory with the name as defined in pythonPath. Only when pythonPath is one word (without any / or \).

[brettcannon]

Decided to not prepend a . as it gets dropped on Windows and otherwise didn't add enough usefulness to keep it only for UNIX.