git.autoRepositoryDetection setting seems to have no effect

Issue Type: Bug

Setting git.autoRepositoryDetection to true, false, subFolders or openEditors seems to have no effect.

After setting git.autoRepositoryDetection to false (for both user and workspace) and then opening a workspace, Visual Studio Code still detects Git repositories from current, parent or subfolders.

VS Code version: Code 1.63.2 (899d46d82c4c95423fb7e10e68eba52050e30ba3, 2021-12-15T09:40:02.816Z) OS version: Windows_NT x64 10.0.19044 Restricted Mode: No

System Info

Item	Value
CPUs	Intel® Core™ i7-10700K CPU @ 3.80GHz (8 x 3792)
GPU Status	2d_canvas: enabled gpu_compositing: enabled multiple_raster_threads: enabled_on oop_rasterization: enabled opengl: enabled_on rasterization: enabled skia_renderer: enabled_on video_decode: enabled vulkan: disabled_off webgl: enabled webgl2: enabled
Load (avg)	undefined
Memory (System)	31.92GB (24.82GB free)
crash-reporter-id a836ae33-3ec4-4cfd-b783-0e44ad433173
Screen Reader	no
VM	0%

Extensions (28)

Extension	Author (truncated)	Version
armview	ben	0.4.5
doxdocgen	csc	1.3.2
vscode-eslint	dba	2.2.2
prettier-vscode	esb	9.1.0
better-cpp-syntax	jef	1.15.10
azure-pipelines	ms-	1.195.0
vscode-azureappservice	ms-	0.23.0
vscode-azurefunctions	ms-	1.6.0
vscode-azureresourcegroups	ms-	0.4.0
vscode-azurestorage	ms-	0.12.1
vscode-azurevirtualmachines	ms-	0.4.1
vscode-bicep	ms-	0.4.1124
vscode-cosmosdb	ms-	0.18.1
vscode-docker	ms-	1.18.0
vscode-dotnet-runtime	ms-	1.5.0
vscode-edge-devtools	ms-	1.4.2
remote-containers	ms-	0.209.6
remote-ssh	ms-	0.70.0
remote-wsl	ms-	0.63.13
azure-account	ms-	0.9.11
azurecli	ms-	0.5.0
cmake-tools	ms-	1.9.2
cpptools	ms-	1.7.1
cpptools-extension-pack	ms-	1.1.0
vscode-node-azure-pack	ms-	0.2.1
azurerm-vscode-tools	msa	0.15.5
cmake	twx	0.0.17
vim	vsc	1.21.10

(1 theme extensions excluded)

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vswsl492cf:30256860
pythontb:30283811
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vstes263:30335439
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vscod805cf:30301675
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[neggles]

@ak5k, thanks for filing the issue. As of right now, the setting controls scanning repositories that are not in the root workspace folder which is being opened in VS Code. We could probably improve on the documentation but we are also opened to behaviour change. Could you please share your scenario in which you would like to disable repository detection completely? Thank you!

Right. If these settings don’t prevent autodetection of repositories within the workspace, they have pretty misleading names… It would be good to have this laid out explicitly in the documentation somewhere; as far as I’ve been able to find, it’s not. There’s not much in the way of documentation around any of the git config settings…

The inability to prevent the git extension from automatically recursing through every repository in a workspace is utterly infuriating whenever you’re dealing with a repo project or west workspace. Both of these ‘metarepo’ type setups contain ludicrous numbers of repositories, the overwhelming majority of which I am never going to touch. Opening all of them consumes a massive amount of resources, as does constantly watching them for changes.

Even with these workspace settings:

{
    "folders": [
        {
            "name": "west",
            "path": ".."
        },
        {
            "name": "project-1",
            "path": "."
        },
        {
            "name": "project-2",
            "path": "..\\project-2"
        }
    ],
    "settings": {
        "git.detectSubmodules": false,
        "git.repositoryScanMaxDepth": 0,
        "git.autoRepositoryDetection": "subFolders",
        "git.repositoryScanIgnoredFolders": [
            "bootloader",
            "mbedtls",
            "modules",
            "nrf",
            "nrfxlib",
            "test",
            "tools",
            "zephyr"
        ]
}

As well as variants with the full path to the ignored folders, variants with git.ignoredRepositories set to the full path of the repository folders, and variants with autoRepositoryDetection set to anything other than false, every single repo inside the root dir gets opened by the git extension.

Making matters worse, there’s no quick way to close every open repository (or even more than one at once) so I can manually reopen the 1-2 which actually matter. I’d honestly settle for a palette command to close every open repository at this point…

The only other option left is to make the workspace into a multi-root, set git.autoRepositoryDetection to false, and add each of the repos I want to work with as extra workspace folders. This is… clunky, at best. It would be really nice if I could just do this:

{
    "settings": {
        "git.ignoredRepositories": [
            "${workspaceFolder:west}/bootloader",
            "${workspaceFolder:west}/mbedtls",
            "${workspaceFolder:west}/modules",
            "${workspaceFolder:west}/nrf",
            "${workspaceFolder:west}/nrfxlib",
            "${workspaceFolder:west}/test",
            "${workspaceFolder:west}/tools",
            "${workspaceFolder:west}/zephyr"
        ]
    }
}

or conversely, explicitly specify which git repos to open automatically in a folder (whitelist as opposed to blacklist), with something like:

{
    "settings": {
        "git.autoRepositoryDetection": false,
        "git.openRepositories": [
            "${workspaceFolder}/path/to/project-1",
            "${workspaceFolder}/path/to/project-2"
        ]
    }
}

either of these would make dealing with these nightmarishly huge metarepositories (like Zephyr and, well, Android/AOSP) so very very much nicer…

[ak5k]

Hi! In my scenario workspace root (CMake project) is a Git repository, and it has submodules (which in turn have submodules etc). It seems no matter what combination I set for repository and submodule or modification detection, the root repository and its submodules and their modifications are always detected. If it’s meant to work this way when workspace root is a Git repository, then it isn’t really a problem. But if behaviour is to change, I would like the possibility to ignore submodules and/or their modifications and/or the entire root repository itself, even when the VSCode workspace root is also a Git repository.