feat: allow Cmd+L / Cmd+I on empty selection to select the entire file

[fbricon]

This PR makes it simpler to add code to the Chat context: if no code is selected, the entire line is added to the context by Cmd+I or Cmd+L. This behaviour is similar to what Github Copilot offers.

expand-empty-selection.mp4

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Summary by cubic

Cmd+L and Cmd+I now select the entire line if no text is selected, making it easier to add code to the Chat context. This matches the behavior found in GitHub Copilot.

[Patrick-Erichsen]

I think some of the e2e tests have a valid failure here.

But, I believe at least for cmd + i the current behavior is to insert at the cursor location rather than add the line as context. I think this would also break the ability to toggle open/close the sidebar using cmd + L.

Is your main thought here that Copilot behaves in the way you showed in that video?

cc @sestinj for a second opinion on behavior.

[Patrick-Erichsen]

Chatted this over with @sestinj

• We'd like to preserve the cmd + L sidebar toggling behavior
• We'd like to preserve cmd + I insert behavior, but only on empty lines.

With that in mind, could we scope the update to basically be "if the user pressed cmd + I on a line with any characters, the entire line is added to context` ?

[fbricon]

So from what I can see, the existing Cmd+L behavior is to show the webview if hidden, and focus the cursor there. Not sure it's accurate to call it toggle, since another Cmd+L doesn't hide it, but the webview is unfocused.

I can look into reducing the scope of Cmd+I, I'll see if it works

[Patrick-Erichsen]

Not sure it's accurate to call it toggle, since another Cmd+L doesn't hide it, but the webview is unfocused.

Hm, this isn't working for you? For me if I repeatedly hit Cmd + L it will open/close the sidebar.

[Patrick-Erichsen]

I merged main but I believe the remaining failures are legitimate.

[fbricon]

So actually the bulk of these changes concerns selecting the whole line on Cmd+L.

For Cmd+I, the only thing that changed was the command is now visible when right-clicking on the editor (removing the editorHasSelection clause for continue.focusEdit in package.json). The behavior of Cmd+I itself has not changed.

If the new Cmd+L behavior is not something the Continue team is willing to get in, this is fine, we can just reject this PR. But if you find some value in this approach, then I'll look more closely into the test failures, as expectations have changed.

@Patrick-Erichsen Let me know what you decide.

[fbricon]

Not sure it's accurate to call it toggle, since another Cmd+L doesn't hide it, but the webview is unfocused.

Hm, this isn't working for you? For me if I repeatedly hit Cmd + L it will open/close the sidebar.

No it doesn't work for me that way. 2nd Cmd+L doesn't close the sidebar, just unfocusses it. I tried woth both release and prerelease versions of continue, on 2 macbooks.

[Patrick-Erichsen]

Hm, well the cmd + L toggle behavior not working is a bug, that is the intended behavior.

But if the cmd + I behavior remains the same and the bulk of the changes are around the cmd + L line highlight then I think we can close this out, unfortunately. I don't think we have metrics on how many people actually use the toggle behavior so it's more of a "gut feel" but at least on the team most of use the toggle behavior quite frequently.

[Patrick-Erichsen]

@fbricon circling back here, chatted things over more with @TyDunn and I think we'd be opening to aligning with Copilot here, eg having cmd + L add the current line.

I think it's likely that the only folks using the toggle behavior is the internal Continue team.

[fbricon]

ok, I'll take a look at the test failures when I'm back from PTO on Monday

[Patrick-Erichsen]

Think a few are still failing unfortunately

[fbricon]

Yes, it was a simple rebase. I need to figure out how to run those tests locally

[RomneyDa]

@fbricon after sitting on this for a while we're thinking it should add the whole file, since in most cases during usage the user will want to just add the file to context, and one line is rarely useful/probably usually confusing to the model. Thoughts on tweaking to add full file instead of that line?

Agree that removing the sidebar toggle functionality is fine

[Patrick-Erichsen]

@fbricon bump on this one!

[fbricon]

I'll get back to it on Monday

[fbricon]

The shortcut now selects the entire file if no text is highlighted. e2e tests fixed (that took me a while).

Looks like some other unit tests fail but they seem irrelevant

[RomneyDa]

Nice, appreciate inclusion of e2e tests

[RomneyDa]

@fbricon it looks like the description is still showing the line number of the cursor as the range, although the functionality of including the entire file is working

[fbricon]

@fbricon it looks like the description is still showing the line number of the cursor as the range, although the functionality of including the entire file is working

Fixed

[RomneyDa]

@fbricon thank you!

[sestinj]

🎉 This PR is included in version 1.13.0 🎉

The release is available on:

• npm package (@latest dist-tag)
• GitHub release

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