Expand PickList to support *grouping*

[alefragnani]

Originally reported in #7019 (comment)

The idea is to show items in the pick list, just like Go to Symbol, where you have some kind of groups of items (that appears when you type '@:' in the pick list)?

Thanks in advance

[gjsjohnmurray]

Would the team consider a PR for this API enhancement request so QuickPickItems can be grouped?

[chrmarti]

@gjsjohnmurray Lets first discuss the API change. Would you just surface what we use internally? There we allow the items list to be either a QuickPickItem or a QuickPickSeparator which then separates the groups and can have a label.

[gjsjohnmurray]

@chrmarti that makes good sense to me. @alefragnani is that what you wanted?

[alefragnani]

@gjsjohnmurray I never thought the API would be that way. I was thinking about a group/category data attached to each QuickPickItem and the QuickPick itself would deal with grouping and counting the items in each group (when properly turned on with a new QuickPickOptions option). At first sight, I thought the groups (line separator and labels/counting) would be generated automatically.

But, if the proposed API (QuickPickItem and QuickPickSeparator) could give me the same power/flexibility as we see today in Go to Symbol command, it would be great.

I just wonder how/if I should deal with the ordering, visibility and counting myself when the user filters the PickList, with the QuickPickSeparator. As you see, the counter changes, so should I "recreate/update" that QuickPickSeparator too?

I didn't dig in VS Code source to see how the internal API works today, but with the right documentation and samples, I guess it wouldn't be a problem.

Thank you

[chrmarti]

The built-in filtering removes all separators because it also sorts across groups by the best match. Go to Symbol does its own filtering and sorting, the createQuickPick API would allow you to do the same once we support disabling sorting and filtering.

[jrieken]

I was thinking about a group/category data attached to each QuickPickItem and the QuickPick itself would deal with grouping and counting the items in each group

Big 👍 for that

[chrmarti]

I was thinking about a group/category data attached to each QuickPickItem and the QuickPick itself would deal with grouping and counting the items in each group

Big 👍 for that

We would copy the group labels across items. If the group label were alternating A, B, A, we would have two options: either sort them by first appearance or consider it distinct groups.

I like an approach without the replication and ambiguities better.

[gjsjohnmurray]

I just discovered this has also been discussed on #74967.

@chrmarti I'll leave it to you (or someone else) to decide if that issue or this one should be closed as a dup. This one is older.

[chrmarti]

Indeed thanks @gjsjohnmurray.

/duplicate #74967