Typing "code" from Start Menu loads inconsistent/confusing experiences

[kuhlenh]

I gave a talk at a .NET meetup the other day and one of the attendees told me he struggled to teach new developers in VS Code because when they type "code" from the Start Menu it flashes a command-line window and then loads VS Code (making them think something failed).

It also has different behavior based on what version of Windows you have (default going to the cmd vs the app):

[hydranix]

could the CALL command be replaced with the START command in code.cmd?

This causes the cmd.exe prompt to exit immediately and only the code.exe window remains open.

[joaomoreno]

@hydranix: #6608

[aarondandy]

@kuhlenh Thanks for making this issue for me. It is really reassuring to see that us little people are being heard.

@hydranix I tried that on my Windows 10 machine and it totally had the desired results from the start menu and does not appear to affect the command line experience. I did some testing for the environment variables and they do appear to be copied before they are undone by endlocal

start "" "%~dp0..\Code.exe" "%~dp0..\resources\\app\\out\\cli.js" %*

@joaomoreno I was able to replicate the issue that you linked by running that same command with my modified batch file but it still offered the same experience so I don't think it would make that issue any worse.

[joaomoreno]

As mentioned in #6608, once you switch to start you lose the --wait and --verbose command line flags: the command simply returns immediately.

[aarondandy]

I missed that but I understand now. Challenge accepted!

[joaomoreno]

Update from the Windows team:

The code.bat shows up in the best match position 0 as a command (and not as a document). I do agree showing the VS Code app in position 0 instead will be more ideal here.

Note that the ranking of search results is personalized, so if users select the VS Code app the first time they search using the query “code”, all subsequent searches using this query will start showing the app in the top position.

[aarondandy]

The behavior you describe does not happen on my machine or on any others I have seen. Is that new behavior in a fast ring build? If so, that will solve it in time for most users. I am on 1607 (OS Build 14393.82)

[joaomoreno]

Reply from the Windows team:

This issue has been fixed since September 8th, the commands are no longer forced to the top.

[Tyriar]

Marking upstream as it's a Windows problem.

[aarondandy]

I can confirm the fix on my computer as well as the computers of other people I have checked. It is in the wild now.