API: Prevent the webview tab from being replaced

[agentcooper]

I didn't find any way to prevent the webview tab from being replaced.

Context: I'm developing an extension with a preview pane that you can interact with. The typical workflow is: open a file, interact with a preview, open a different file. If the user tries to open a different file while the preview is focused, the preview tab will be replaced.

I propose a new option on WebviewPanelOptions:

vscode.window.createWebviewPanel(
  "preview",
  "Preview",
  { viewColumn: vscode.ViewColumn.Beside, preserveFocus: true },
  {
    /** Prevent the tab from being replaced */
    preventFromReplace: true
  },
);

What do you think?

[mjbvz]

I'm not in favor of supporting editors that can't be replaced since it would let webviews behave differently from how all other editors in VS Code currently work.

Would placing the webview in a sidebar cover your use case, either #46585 or #43049. There's also this request for modal webviews: #47899

[agentcooper]

@mjbvz #46585 will definitely solve things for my case.

[mjbvz]

Thanks, please upvote #46585. I'm going to close this feature request as out of scope since I do not think it something we would want to enable