Improvements to clearing of cached interpreter name

Currently the display names of interpreters are cached for a period of 1day. This is done to avoid unnecessarily spawning Python processes for each interpreter every time the extension loads (i.e. every time a new workspace is opened or VSC is reloaded). Note: The cache also expires if the python executable file has changed since the last reload.

However, this can cause some confusions:

• Assume user has python 3.6 installed in a directory named /anaconda3/bin
• Next user updates the above environment to python 3.7.
• Our code does not detect any changes to the above executable and the path is still the same.
• Hence the cached display name is still used (and its incorrect, user sees 3.6 when its supposed to be 3.7). *** This confuses the user**

Solutions:

• Remove caching of these display names completely
  • We’ll end up spawning processes unnecessarily every time VSC loads
• Add some kind of the UI element to the top of the list of interpreters
  • This would read Don't find what you're looking for, click Refresh [Refresh]
  • Basically this is a way to tell the extension to re-load all interpreters and clear the cache
  • This also solves the problem of the user NOT having to reload VS Code if they create a new environment (e.g. a new Conda Environment or the like).

[malone6]

Just fyi if anyone else wants to fiddle wich cache: Within vscode, under help > developer tools > application you can access the local storage where environment names are cached. I deleted the desired cached items. After restarting vscode, my problem was solved.

According to your description. I access local storage, but it is empty

I have solved this problem, use the following method: manage extensions > disable Python extension > restart > enable python extension> restart then all python envs have been flushed(invalid pythonpath disappeared and new pythonpath displayed)

[flurin-conradin]

Thanks for your answer. I described my problem here: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-python/issues/4298 Basically when I run Python: Select Interpreter environments that do not exist anymore are shown and vscode crashes.