Manual setup rather than modifying settings on installation

[yzhang-gh]

Thanks for the nice extension 👍.

However, it might be better to allow manual setup (e.g. a command use recommended settings and a pop-up for confirmation when installed) rather than modifying settings upon installation.

I have device A and both its extensions and settings are synced (including a custom editor.lineHighlightBackground). The problem is that when I open VS Code on device B, the custom color is overwritten (and then synced among all my devices). And I can see that every time I open VS Code on a device that hasn't installed Blockman, the setting will be overwritten again...

[leodevbro]

Thanks, I'll think about it. Well, currently I think making a popup prompt will be more annoying for most users than modifying settings quietly. And all these 7 items are easy to reset manually.

// settings.json (User/Global config, not Workspace config)
// To open this file in VSCode, press F1, type 'settings json' and choose 'Preferences: Open Settings (JSON)'
{
    // ...
    "editor.inlayHints.enabled": false,
    "editor.guides.indentation": false, // new API for indent guides. The old one is: "editor.renderIndentGuides": false,
    "editor.guides.bracketPairs": false, // advanced indent guides (But only for brackets) (This does not turn off editor.bracketPairColorization)
    "editor.wordWrap": "off",
    "diffEditor.wordWrap": "off",

    "workbench.colorCustomizations": {
        // ...
        "editor.lineHighlightBorder": "#9fced11f",
        "editor.lineHighlightBackground": "#1073cf2d"
    }
}

But of course I'll try to think about the cases like yours.

[yzhang-gh]

Thank you

[ThaJay]

I really like this extention, it does improve the readability of my code.

Although in my situation, every time VsCode starts up, the mentioned settings are reset. However, I prefer using "editor.guides.indentation": true. It's way faster and it adds minimal clutter to my eyes. This does mean I have to manually reset this setting every time I start coding.

Maybe this has something to do with syncing of extensions and settings. I don't know. But I do think it's not a good pattern to change user settings without confirmation. I would be really grateful if this automatic behaviour would stop.

Instead there could be a button in the welcome page (I do not see this page every startup but the setting is reset regardless) that sets these settings. It would not really complicate the installation process in my opinion because the user is already focussed on the plugin at that time, but it would remove any chance of this happening again unintended. A yes/no option would be fine as well. Many softwares have a simple config wizard after installation.

I'm actually surprised vscode even allows extensions to automatically change user settings.

Thanks again for this exstension and I hope you take these points into consideration.

This is what my personal preference looks like:

[leodevbro]

Hello, I'll try to make prompt dialogs during installation, but your case seems very strange. Blockman changes VS Code settings only at install-time, not at every startup. Maybe you do some kind of reinstallation on each startup?

Edit:
Oh, I discovered it really changes the settings on every startup, maybe it's a bug of Blockman, I'll check it out.

[leodevbro]

@ThaJay, Ok, I think this solution will fix your issue that Blockman changes indent guides settings on every startup.

Probably in the past you have enabled automatic hiding of indent guides, so let's try to disable it:

Press F1, type blockman guides

this command will show up:
Blockman Toggle Disable/Enable Automatic Showing/Hiding Indent Guides

Run it. And it should show the message:

OK, Blockman will NOT change anything about indent guides.

[ThaJay]

Initially I thought it was a kind of reinstallation but probably just because the old settings sync extention could do something like that. Thinking about it now, it's not very likely that the native settings sync vscode has now reinstalls things unnecessarily.

Thank you for looking into this so quicly! Your advice works like a charm, now my indent guide stays after restarting vscode.