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Add an extension setting to control inlay hints #1526

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9 changes: 7 additions & 2 deletions package.json
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Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -311,6 +311,11 @@
{
"title": "Swift",
"properties": {
"swift.inlayHints.enabled": {
"type": "boolean",
"default": false,
"markdownDescription": "Display inlay hints. Inlay hints are variable annotations indicating their inferred type."
},
"swift.path": {
"type": "string",
"default": "",
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -683,9 +688,9 @@
},
"sourcekit-lsp.inlayHints.enabled": {
"type": "boolean",
"default": true,
"default": false,
"markdownDescription": "Display Inlay Hints. Inlay Hints are variable annotations indicating their inferred type. They are only available if you are using Swift 5.6 or later.",
"markdownDeprecationMessage": "**Deprecated**: Please use `#editor.inlayHints.enabled#` instead."
"markdownDeprecationMessage": "**Deprecated**: Please use `#swift.inlayHints.enabled#` instead."
},
"sourcekit-lsp.support-c-cpp": {
"type": "string",
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2 changes: 2 additions & 0 deletions src/commands.ts
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Expand Up @@ -46,6 +46,7 @@ import { runTask } from "./commands/runTask";
import { TestKind } from "./TestExplorer/TestKind";
import { pickProcess } from "./commands/pickProcess";
import { openDocumentation } from "./commands/openDocumentation";
import { toggleInlayHints } from "./commands/toggleInlayHints";

/**
* References:
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -217,6 +218,7 @@ export function register(ctx: WorkspaceContext): vscode.Disposable[] {
vscode.commands.executeCommand("vscode.open", vscode.Uri.file(packagePath));
}),
vscode.commands.registerCommand("swift.openDocumentation", () => openDocumentation()),
vscode.commands.registerCommand("swift.toggleInlayHints", () => toggleInlayHints()),
];
}

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35 changes: 35 additions & 0 deletions src/commands/toggleInlayHints.ts
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@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
//===----------------------------------------------------------------------===//
//
// This source file is part of the VS Code Swift open source project
//
// Copyright (c) 2025 the VS Code Swift project authors
// Licensed under Apache License v2.0
//
// See LICENSE.txt for license information
// See CONTRIBUTORS.txt for the list of VS Code Swift project authors
//
// SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0
//
//===----------------------------------------------------------------------===//

import * as vscode from "vscode";
import configuration from "../configuration";

/**
* Configures editor.inlayHints.enabled settings based on swift.inlayHints.enabled settings
*/
export async function toggleInlayHints() {
let settingValue = undefined;

if (!configuration.inlayHintsEnabled) {
settingValue = "off";
}

const config = vscode.workspace.getConfiguration("", { languageId: "swift" });
await config.update(
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@plemarquand plemarquand Apr 28, 2025 •
edited
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This is going to automatically add a .vscode/settings.json file for every package opened in VS Code and add the following to it:

    "[swift]": {
        "editor.inlayHints.enabled": "off"
    }

When I update .vscode/settings.json to set this value to "on", save, and reload the window it gets re-written to "off".

Automatically resetting the setting aside, I don't think we should be generating a settings.json for the user at all as these are meant to be for the user to control, not an extension.

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Thanks, yes agreed that touching settings.json automatically is probably not welcome (although we do touch the settings.json for other things like swift environment variables, for example, but the user would have to set them manually I think). Any other suggestions on how the inlay hints could be disabled by default so that new users who don't know how to turn this setting off are not annoyed?

Could send a setting to sourcekit-lsp separately to turn off inlay hints possibly, and then if the user says:

  "[swift]": {
        "editor.inlayHints.enabled": "on"
    }

or sets swift.inlayHints.enabled to true then it would turn on inlay hints?

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How do other extensions handle this? Do popular language extensions they swim against the VS Code defaults?

My gut feeling is we should tell sourcekit-lsp to disable them unless there is a setting set explicitly that turns them on, but because the default for editor.inlayHints.enabled is "on" I dont know if we can tell if this is explicitly set by the user or not.

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Good ideas thanks, it seems like most do it with passing in flags to lsp (Go does it with gopls and rust with rust-analyser), although it looks like C/C++ use vscode api's to override inlayHint behaviour directly.

You are correct that it's not possible to tell whether editor.inlayHints.enabled is explicitly set to on. So it's looking like I'll just have to add functionality like the sourcekit-lsp.inlayHints.enabled setting had at one point.

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You can use the inspect() method to find out if the user has explicitly configured a setting. Have a look at https://github.com/swiftlang/vscode-swift/blob/main/src/configuration.ts#L245 for an example in the Swift extension's configuration. It will even tell you if it has been configured for a particular language.

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I just saw this PR (swiftlang/sourcekit-lsp#2156), and i tracked back the discussion to here.

@plemarquand

How do other extensions handle this?

rust-analyzer (which is basically our sourcekit-lsp) has a bunch of settings for different kinds of inlay hints which are exposed through the VSCode extension as well. There are a lot of settings so I could have missed something but there doesn't appear to be a rust-specific settings to completely turn off inlay hints.
Instead there are 27 different inlay hints settings that can granularly turn specific inlay hints on or off, and a lot of them are off by default.
I think this will be a decent amount of work, but should be what we aim for.

Rust vscode extension inlay hints settings, scrshot 1
Rust vscode extension inlay hints settings, scrshot 2
Rust vscode extension inlay hints settings, scrshot 3

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Thanks for this @MahdiBM. I think most other LSPs have several options for inlay hints, but as far as I understand sourcekit-lsp only provides them for inferred variable type names. So, I think for now it'll just be one inlay hint setting that will control this. For sure more options can be added once sourcekit-lsp provides inlay hints with the same level of granularity as other LSPs.

Also, I'm trying out some options on the LSP side to control this here - currently just the flag at startup, but need to look into using capabilities directly so the server doesn't need to be restarted every time (thanks to Mahdi linking this as well): swiftlang/sourcekit-lsp#2156

"editor.inlayHints.enabled",
settingValue,
vscode.ConfigurationTarget.Workspace,
true
);
}
7 changes: 7 additions & 0 deletions src/configuration.ts
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Expand Up @@ -17,6 +17,7 @@ import * as os from "os";
import * as path from "path";
import { showReloadExtensionNotification } from "./ui/ReloadExtension";
import { WorkspaceContext } from "./WorkspaceContext";
import { toggleInlayHints } from "./commands/toggleInlayHints";

export type DebugAdapters = "auto" | "lldb-dap" | "CodeLLDB";
export type SetupCodeLLDBOptions =
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -410,6 +411,10 @@ const configuration = {
get diagnostics(): boolean {
return vscode.workspace.getConfiguration("swift").get<boolean>("diagnostics", false);
},
/** enable inlay hints from SourceKit LSP by setting editor.inlayHints.enabled */
get inlayHintsEnabled(): boolean {
return vscode.workspace.getConfiguration("swift.inlayHints").get<boolean>("enabled", false);
},
/**
* Test coverage settings
*/
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -535,6 +540,8 @@ export function handleConfigurationChangeEvent(
showReloadExtensionNotification(
"Changing environment variables requires the project be reloaded."
);
} else if (event.affectsConfiguration("swift.inlayHints.enabled")) {
toggleInlayHints();
}
};
}
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4 changes: 4 additions & 0 deletions src/extension.ts
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Expand Up @@ -36,6 +36,7 @@ import { checkAndWarnAboutWindowsSymlinks } from "./ui/win32";
import { SwiftEnvironmentVariablesManager, SwiftTerminalProfileProvider } from "./terminal";
import { resolveFolderDependencies } from "./commands/dependencies/resolve";
import { SelectedXcodeWatcher } from "./toolchain/SelectedXcodeWatcher";
import { toggleInlayHints } from "./commands/toggleInlayHints";
import configuration, { handleConfigurationChangeEvent } from "./configuration";
import contextKeys from "./contextKeys";

Expand Down Expand Up @@ -140,6 +141,9 @@ export async function activate(context: vscode.ExtensionContext): Promise<Api> {
// Mark the extension as activated.
contextKeys.isActivated = true;

// toggle inlay hints based on swift.inlayHints.enabled settings
toggleInlayHints();

return {
workspaceContext,
outputChannel,
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