no code navigation in the VS Code extension when using Alire projects

[dalybrown]

We lost the ability to navigate code sometime a couple months ago (rough estimate) using the VS Code extension. We exclusively use Alire to manage our projects and dependencies. We develop in a remote container using dev containers and the VS code extension.

It might have something to do with the version of Alire we are using (2.0.1) or the version of the extension (v24.0.5).

We have tried adjusting where the dependencies are cached using:

alr settings --global --set dependencies.shared false

and this still does not fix it. The VS Code extension complains it can't find any of the project files we depend on. These dependencies are managed by Alire.

Somewhere a regression has been introduced. Our environment used to work with SPARK/Ada and Alire, and still works for every other language we develop with.

We see this behaviour on both amd64 and arm64 platforms and with different Alire projects.

[dalybrown]

Here is a reproducer ... just open this folder in VS code and, using the dev container extension, it will build the the dev container automatically and install the Ada VS code extension. You'll notice you can't navigate code but building with alire works fine.

reproducer.tar.gz

[reznikmm]

Hello @dalybrown

Thank you for self-contained reproducer! I'm able to reproduce. Probably, the reason is that ALS launches two instances of alr simultaneously (alr show and alr printenv) and this doesn't work with alr 2.0 any more.

To unblock you I propose to rename alr to alr2 and create a shell wrapper for alr:

#!/bin/bash

LOCK=/tmp/alr.lock

if [[ "$1/$2" =~ --non-interactive/(show|printenv) ]] ; then
  while ! { set -C; 2>/dev/null >$LOCK; } ; do sleep 0.5 ; done
  trap "rm -f $LOCK" EXIT
fi

${0}2 "$@"

I guess you also may need to add alr -n build after alr -n update to let Alire run pre/post build actions. Or you can run alr build in the terminal and then launch "Ada: Reload project" from vscode command palette.

Please let us know if this works for you.

[dalybrown]

Thanks for the reply.

Before we start implementing workarounds (this affects more than just me), is this something that is planned to be fixed soon (ish)? We can live without code navigation for a bit longer...

Let me know! Thanks!

[reznikmm]

I'm going to change ALS code to launch alr sequentially, but it has not been decided when we will release v24.0.6 yet.

[dalybrown]

Thanks for the response! I'll try out your proposal this week (and monitor for the updated extension). Cheers!

[dalybrown]

I also see this error quite a bit in the console (not sure it's related):

alr_env.gpr[Ln 1, Col 1]: Project file has errors and can't be loaded.
[Ln 2, Col 2]: project file "/path/to/project/alire/alr_env.gpr" not found

I didn't get a chance to try the workaround - I haven't been able to do much development the past couple of weeks :(. I'll try to get around to it today or next week.

[reznikmm]

Could you try 24.0.6 version?

[dalybrown]

I will try this next week when I (hopefully) get back to coding. Thanks!

[dalybrown]

I get this error when using 24.0.6:

project file "/workspaces/XXX/alire/alr_env.gpr" not found

and this error:

Project file has errors and can't be loaded.

This is with a fresh crate. Something doesn't seem right still.

Also other things don't work: formatting code, etc.

I'm not sure what I'm missing here, and how others are using this. This is with a completely fresh environment, a brand new fresh crate, etc.

[dalybrown]

I'm not sure what I'm missing here: code navigation doesn't work reliably for me, nor does it work reliably for my colleague. I think there is a race condition somewhere still, or I am just doing something incorrect. If I reload the window, I can get it to work sometimes.

[dalybrown]

I have been away from coding for a while - but this is still an issue for me with the latest alire version and vs code extension. I feel like I'm missing something because code navigation just doesn't work!

Update: I noticed that there was some default setting for the Ada Project File set to alr_env.gpr. I deleted this and things seem to have started working better - could this have been the issue all along? And where did that default setting come from - I never set it.