Improve the UI/UX of the Multi-Root Workspace Project Outline Pane

This is just a slight UI/UX improvement request.

Brief Issue Summary

I’m using a multi-root workspace SSH’d into a remote VM. The CMake Project Outline pane shows full paths even though they all start with the same string - /home/vagrant/mercury. Here’s what it looks like:

Expected:

If all the multi-root workspace paths start with the same prefix (EG: /home/vagrant/mercury), then get rid of that prefix. This would make the pane easier to read.

Apparent Behavior:

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CMake Tools Log

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Developer Tools Log

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Platform and Versions

• Operating System: Win10 VSCode SSH-Remoted into an Ubuntu 20.04 VM
• CMake Version: 3.16.3
• VSCode Version: 1.46.1
• CMake Tools Extension Version: 1.4.1
• Compiler/Toolchain: Several. Hence the multi-root workspace.

Other Notes/Information

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[bobbrow]

Just a couple thoughts. Let me know if these should be broken out into separate issues. I renamed this issue to Improve the UI/UX of the Multi-Root Workspace Project Outline Pane to encompass these three requests.

Can you point out the 3rd request? I’m only seeing two:

1. A setting that changes how the workspace folder nodes are presented
2. A setting that allows you to hide empty nodes

Maybe the 3rd one was from your first post, though I’m thinking the setting you proposed in the follow up would replace that. It’s possible that this setting could even allow you to customize the node any way you like with a few supported variables. See window.title for an example of what I’m thinking (but not committing to yet! 😄) though we’d have different variables, of course:

[MBetters]

Quick follow-up. It’d be great to have more control over how the Project Outline pane appears. For a multi-root workspace, maybe there could be a setting like cmake.projectOutline.multiRootOutline.sectionFormat that could have a few common-sense settings. For example, being able to have the top level sections just be the “names” of the multi-root folders instead of the paths. Etc.

Another thought I had was having an option like cmake.projectOutline.showEmptyProjects that could be true or false. I have a few dummy empty projects I’m using until https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-cmake-tools/issues/1069 gets fixed, so it’d be great to be able to just hide them. But I’m sure there are other cases where people use empty projects for their own special reasons, and don’t need to see them in the Project Outline pane.

Just a couple thoughts. Let me know if these should be broken out into separate issues. I renamed this issue to Improve the UI/UX of the Multi-Root Workspace Project Outline Pane to encompass these three requests.