Field report: VSCode on clean Windows installation

[rkdarst]

This describes what I observed, for future reference.

Date: 2024-03-05
Windows 10 Pro Education, standalone installation (not university managed)

• VSCode web page, click download, select Windows "User installer" x86
• Run the installer
  • The only really important configuration option seemed to be "add vscode to PATH"
• start vscode
• Aside: I clicked "remote connection" and "SSH" and it automatically installed the remote-ssh extension. So vscode does sometimes automatically install extensions.
• From the menu bar, I did Terminal → New Terminal. It started a PowerShell terminal. e.g. pwd, cd /, cd /Users/user/testproject/ worked (and it tab-completed to C:\Users\...). So backslashes/forward slashes mostly works
  • The usual hotkey control-backquote doesn't work to open the terminal.
• I click the "version control" tab on the side. It says "Install git, a popular ..." with a big "Download Git for Windows" button. So Git installation separately is needed, but it is guided.
• Click "Download git for windows". It launches a web browser to the Git for windows site. Follow those instructions (same as we have now).
  • I did select "use VSCode as an editor for git" (instead of Nano)
• I go back to vscode. git doesnt' work from the terminal, and it still prompts me to download Git. Probably OK: this is probably because of PATH.
• Exit and restart vscode. Now it works: git appears in the terminal and in the "version control" browser.

Let's try using it:

• I had made a blank testproject.
• I can click "Initialize repository" in the VCS tab. It also shows something about Github, which I didn't click yet.
• I add some files
• I go to the VCS tab and add the files. I cilkc "commit" and it says "Make sure you configure your "user.name" and "user.email" in git. The dialog says it comes from VSCode itself. It doesn't let me commit until I fix this.
• If I enter a message in the VCS commit sidepanel, it commits directly
  • If I don't enter a commit message, it starts a new vscode tab where I can edit the message (I guess it did this since I told it to use vscode as an editor). This basically does what we want: you can edit the message, and the git process waits until you close the tab.
• If, from the terminal, I git config --global --edit, it starts a tab in vscode. As expected. If I remove the core.editor config, then it starts the editor in the terminal (vi by default)
  • I can change the core.editor to nano and it works with nano. Changing back to the default value opens in vscode again.
  • Setting core.editor to code --wait (no quotes) also works to launch within the vscode tab.
  • But if core.editor is unset and I click "commit" from the sidebar, it does launch the editor in the a vscode tab. I wonder if vscode is overriding the editor option on the command line directly (I couldn't find a way to inspect the processes enough to see how it was started).

Output of git config --list --show-origin:

file:C:/Program Files/Git/etc/gitconfig diff.astextplain.textconv=astextplain
file:C:/Program Files/Git/etc/gitconfig filter.lfs.clean=git-lfs clean -- %f
file:C:/Program Files/Git/etc/gitconfig filter.lfs.smudge=git-lfs smudge -- %f
file:C:/Program Files/Git/etc/gitconfig filter.lfs.process=git-lfs filter-process
file:C:/Program Files/Git/etc/gitconfig filter.lfs.required=true
file:C:/Program Files/Git/etc/gitconfig http.sslbackend=schannel
file:C:/Program Files/Git/etc/gitconfig core.autocrlf=true
file:C:/Program Files/Git/etc/gitconfig core.fscache=true
file:C:/Program Files/Git/etc/gitconfig core.symlinks=false
file:C:/Program Files/Git/etc/gitconfig pull.rebase=false
file:C:/Program Files/Git/etc/gitconfig credential.helper=manager
file:C:/Program Files/Git/etc/gitconfig credential.https://dev.azure.com.usehttppath=true
file:C:/Program Files/Git/etc/gitconfig init.defaultbranch=master
file:C:/Users/user/.gitconfig   core.editor="C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code\bin\code" --wait

Misc screenshots (these may be used, I claim there is no creative work so no copyright by me. But it might be better to re-generate unless it's windows-specific):

VCS sidebar icon:

New terminal:

Download git for windows:

Git defaults:

Warning to configure username and email:

[rkdarst]

All text and pictures above should be considered public domain/CC-0 and can be used anywhere to improve git instructions.