Built-in IntelliSense support for pytest fixtures

[jwilges]

Out of the box, the vscode-python extension does not appear to offer up any IntelliSense integration for pytest fixtures, despite supporting other pytest mechanics. Although there are a couple extensions that take a rough stab at the idea, none of them appear to be actively maintained and none of them (as far as I could see) integrate particularly well with VS Code features such as python.envFile.

Has anyone contributing to the VS Code Python extension put this feature on a roadmap anywhere? Perhaps while the extension is collecting tests it could also parse pytest --fixtures output in the same run to build a cache of fixtures? The command line interface doesn't expose type hints in its output, unfortunately, but at least it supplies enough information to know which types to poll for type hints.

The pytest folks do not seem to care much about the presence of type hint information per issue #5981, but if you look at what PyCharm has documented about their implementation (see their guide and a post documenting their fixture hinting feature), it seems they go for gold across the board.

If it's something that would qualify to make it into the stock vscode-python extension, I'd be inclined to see if there's a way I could help if even just by porting an existing extension and fixing my nits as a proof of concept. I don't think the extension marketplace needs yet another cloned abandonware extension for this, though...

[brettcannon]

For such support it would need to come from Pylance. You can make such a feature request at https://github.com/microsoft/pylance-release/discussions/ (and there's one around navigation already open at microsoft/pylance-release#2576).

[jwilges]

Fantastic! Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I'm happy to port this discussion over to the Pylance repository and see where it goes. And you're right, the pytest fixture navigation discussion has reasonable overlap, so I'll see if I can join into that discussion. Scanning fixtures is a must for both, and I'd think it would make sense to have a nice IntelliSense presentation for something that supports navigation so you know what you're about to jump into.