Workspace Sidebar

An extension for VSCode to switch Workspaces with ease.

You can specify one or more folders to look in for Workspace files and these will be shown in a sidebar, either as a list or as a tree, along with file theme icons to better indentify workspaces.

You can then easily change Workspaces or open another Workspace in a new window.

What's new in v2.1.0?

See a video showcasing the changes

• Root folder handling of changes to config has been improved:
  • Results are shown as they come back, the extension no longer waits until all root folders have been collected.
  • This means root folders show their loading state under their name - the global loading state has been removed.
  • You can now refetch root folders on a per root folder basis
  • The extension now is more selective about refetching and will only do it if some property has changed.
  • Moving a root folder in the config no longer causes a refetch to occur
• There is a new config option to focus the file explorer after opening a workspace in a new window. Closes #173
• Several more explorer settings are now respected in rendering the tree/list that should make the sidebar look and behave more like other views in VSCode:
  • expandMode
  • indent
  • renderIndentGuides
• Updated documentation

See the Changelog for a complete version history.

Features

The extension works by searching the root folders for .code-workspace files, and then displaying them as either a list or a tree.

View Mode

List View

The Workspaces are displayed for each root folder in a list.

Tree View

A representation of the file tree is displayed, these can be collapsed/expanded in a similar way to the File Explorer in VSCode. The file tree can also be cleaned up to reduce visual noise, or displayed as is. In additon folders with only one child can be combined in a similar way to the File Explorer to reduce the number of folders displayed.

Search

A search box is provided to allow you to search for a specific Workspace.

File Theme Icons

File icons are displayed based on a simple substring match against the file path. There is no need to configure file icons for each workspace separately.

More information about the file theme config

Configuration

This is a summary of the available configuration options. View detailed configuration documentaion.

General

Setting	Description	Default Value	Type
Actions	The default action when clicking on a workspace. By default, clicking opens the workspace in the current window and the icon click in a new window. You can use this setting to reverse this behaviour.	Current Window	Dropdown List
Clean Labels	Should workspace labels be converted to Title Case? If not their filename will be used as-is.	true	Boolean
Depth	The depth of subfolders to search when looking for Workspace files. This can be overriden per root folder.	0	Number 0-25
Focus Explorer	After opening a Workspace in a new window, switch to Explorer view instead of remaining on Workspace Sidebar's view.	false	Boolean
Show File Icons	Show icons from the active file icon theme.	true	Boolean
Show File Icons Config	Config for file icon matching. More information.	{}	Object
Show Paths	Show the paths to the workspaces in the sidebar. Available options are: 'Always', 'Never', 'As needed'. This will only display paths if there are duplicate labels in the same folder.	As Needed	Dropdown List

Folders

Setting	Description	Default Value	Type
Exclude Hidden Folders	Should hidden subfolders be excluded when looking for workspaces? This can speed up searching, however, if you turn this option off you may need to excluded many folders. This can be overridden per root folder.	true	Boolean
Excluded	Subfolders to exclude when searching for workspace files	[ "node_modules", "build", "dist", "out", "public", ".cache", ".git" ]	Array
Root Folders	The folders to look for workspace files in. More information.	[]	Array

Search

Setting	Description	Default Value	Type
Case Insensitive	Should searching be case insensitive?	false	Boolean
Match Start	Should searching start from the beginning of the workspace label? False means matches will be looked for anywhere within workspace labels.	false	Boolean

Tree View

Setting	Description	Default Value	Type
Condense Tree	Reduce visual noise by removing sufolders with only one workspace in. These workspace files will then be shown in their parent folder. Tree View only. More information.	true	Boolean
Show Folder Hierarchy	Display a file tree of workspaces with collapsable folders instead of the default list.	false	Boolean

Translations

This extension is localised, if you want it in your language please send me a translated "package.nls.json" file which you can find in the root of this extension.

Development

If you are intersted in contributing:

• Fork or clone the repo.

• Install dependencies

• Run tests in a development version of VSCode via the debugger launch panel.

  • Tests can't be run via the node script in package.json as a full instance of VSCode is needed.
  • Output of tests is found in the termial Debug Console tab
  • Run tests on Linux, Mac, and Windows.
  • Typecheck will be run by the launch scripts before running tests

• If using file paths, don't hard code the folder separators, use path.join() instead.

  // This will fail in a test on windows:
  const myPath = '/home/user/dev'
  expect(getPathToDev()).to.equal(myPath)
  
  // Do this instead:
  const myPath = path.join('home', 'user', 'dev')
  expect(getPathToDev()).to.equal(myPath)

• If just testing functions that do not use VSCode or just using VSCode types, you can run mocha:compile and then mocha:test to test - but if you use any part of the VSCode API (inc. ENUMs) then you will need to run the tests via the debugger.

• You can package a test version of the extension as a vsix file using the command: vsce package.

  • Test the VSIX on Linux, Mac, and Windows.

• Lint and typechecking commands exist

• Sample colours and CSS variable names

Support

If you use this plugin and want to help support development, please PayPal Me.