Allow to scope settings by platform

[jarod51]

Hi

I develop on 3 different platform. When synchronizing settings, snippets and so on, i often must change path, adjust font-size, etc...

So, it could be great if we had a per platform settings set (Windows, Mac, Unix)

[dbaeumer]

@bpasero, @aeschli FYI.

[bpasero]

#8962

[Tyriar]

#8962 is about keybindings, not settings

[sandy081]

Planning for October to Kickoff

[gueggel]

Any news? This would be a great and really helpful feature.

[pouyarezvani]

Just use Intelij guys 😁

[philipbel]

Well, it's been 7 years, 5 months and 25 days since this issue was posted.

[ievgennaida]

Would be nice to have python venv based on envrionment:
"python.defaultInterpreterPath": "~/venv/bin/python"

[TryerGit]

This will be a huge time saver and boost to productivity. Settings sync does not solve the issue. See stackoverflow discussion on that here

Currently, I have to manually manage the following various versions of settings.json:

Windows Machine 1:

    "hsnips.hsnipsPath": "C:\\Users\\TryerGitOne\\AppData\\Roaming\\Code\\User\\hsnips",

Windows Machine 1, WSL: 

    "hsnips.hsnipsPath": "/mnt/c/users/TryerGitOne/AppData/Roaming/Code/User/hsnips",

Windows Machine 1:

    "vim.neovimPath": "C:\\Users\\TryerGitOne\\Downloads\\nvim-win64\\Neovim\\bin\\nvim.exe",
    "vim.vimrc.path": "C:\\Users\\TryerGitOne\\.vimrc",
    "hsnips.hsnipsPath": "C:\\Users\\TryerGitOne\\AppData\\Roaming\\Code\\User\\hsnips",

Linux: 

    "vim.neovimPath": "/usr/bin/nvim",
    "vim.vimrc.path": "/home/TryerGitOne/GoogleDrive/research_programming/Setup Folder/VSIDE Stuff/.vimrc",
    "hsnips.hsnipsPath": "~/.config/Code/User/hsnips",

Windows Machine 1:

    "vim.neovimPath": "C:\\Users\\TryerGitOne\\Downloads\\nvim-win64\\Neovim\\bin\\nvim.exe",
    "vim.vimrc.path": "C:\\Users\\TryerGitOne\\.vimrc",
    "hsnips.hsnipsPath": "C:\\Users\\TryerGitOne\\AppData\\Roaming\\Code\\User\\hsnips",

Windows Machine 2:

    "vim.neovimPath": "C:\\Users\\TryerGitTwo\\Downloads\\nvim-win64\\bin\\nvim.exe",
    "vim.vimrc.path": "C:\\Users\\TryerGitTwo\\.vimrc",
    "hsnips.hsnipsPath": "C:\\Users\\TryerGitTwo\\AppData\\Roaming\\Code\\User\\hsnips",

Windows Machine 1:

    "vim.neovimPath": "C:\\Users\\TryerGitOne\\Downloads\\nvim-win64\\Neovim\\bin\\nvim.exe",
    "vim.vimrc.path": "C:\\Users\\TryerGitOne\\.vimrc",
    "hsnips.hsnipsPath": "C:\\Users\\TryerGitOne\\AppData\\Roaming\\Code\\User\\hsnips",

Windows Machine 2, WSL: 

    "vim.neovimPath": "C:\\Users\\TryerGitTwo\\Downloads\\nvim-win64\\bin\\nvim.exe",
    "vim.vimrc.path": "C:\\Users\\TryerGitTwo\\.vimrc",
    "hsnips.hsnipsPath": "/mnt/c/users/TryerGitTwo/AppData/Roaming/Code/User/hsnips",

You can easily see the combinatorial madness. Many of these machines (even Windows machines) are official machines where the user does not have the option of providing the same username as all other machines so that the directory paths may be the same.

Vim already provides for this in .vimrc. Here is an example from my single .vimrc where based on running a shell command (query present working directory), one can figure out which machine mount one is on:

let g:machine_run_on_wsloffice = system("pwd | grep -c '/mnt/e'")
let g:machine_run_on_wslhome = system("pwd | grep -c '/mnt/c'")
if g:machine_run_on_wsloffice == 1
  set viminfo=%,<800,'100,/50,:100,f1,n./.vim/.viminfooffice
else
  if g:machine_run_on_wslhome == 1
    set viminfo=%,<800,'100,/50,:100,f1,n./.vim/.viminfohome
  else
    set viminfo=%,<800,'100,/50,:100,f1,n./.vim/.viminfoubuntu
  endif
endif

So, there is no need to have a different .vimrc for different machine. As others have pointed out, CMake has support for something similar also.

[tn-072]

What about this:

{
    // ...
    "[sys:win]": {
            "python.defaultInterpreterPath": "<my python path on windows>",
    },
    "[sys:linux]": {
            "python.defaultInterpreterPath": "<my python path on linux>",
    },
    "[sys:osx]": {
            "python.defaultInterpreterPath": "<my python path on Mac>"
    },
    // ...
}

which uses similar syntax like language-specific settings:

{
    // ...
    "[cpp]": {
        "editor.formatOnSave": true,
        "editor.defaultFormatter": "llvm-vs-code-extensions.vscode-clangd",
    },
    // ...
}

[sdholden]

Some sort of solution is long overdue...any progress?

[buzcarter]

I'll second @tn-072 's suggestion.

{
    "editor.fontSize": 14,
    "python.pythonPath": "/usr/local/bin/python3",
    "[windows]": {
        "editor.fontSize": 16,
        "python.pythonPath": "C:\\Python39\\python.exe"
    },
    "[mac]": {
        "editor.fontSize": 18,
        "python.pythonPath": "/usr/local/bin/python3"
    },
    // ... the shared bits
}

[sanmai-NL]

Instead of scoping by 'platform' I suggest to scope by user-defined tag(s), to support use cases where the same OS is used for different purposes (e.g. work Linux, personal Linux) beyond what profiles can offer.

[heartacker]

Instead of scoping by 'platform' I suggest to scope by user-defined tag(s), to support use cases where the same OS is used for different purposes (e.g. work Linux, personal Linux) beyond what profiles can offer.

What you say is profile

[sanmai-NL]

Then all combinations of language, macOS/Linux/Windows, work/personal would need to be separate profiles.

[starball5]

I ctrl+f-ed for "profile" and several times when the profiles approach came up in past discussion, it was dismissed because at the time, it required creating a standalone copy of settings, and there was no way to inherit from the default. For those people, see #156144, which as released in July 2023. I'm not saying this is the solution. I'm just saying it may be more attractive as a workaround than it had been previously.

[jd-solanki]

Why it's still in backlog?

[pfeerick]

I'd love to see this feature for the some of the above reasons such as OS and path specific differences, but also because I set the new option

"terminal.integrated.middleClickBehavior": "paste"

which works great on Windows, but on Linux (which picks up the setting because I have Settings Sync enabled), it makes it paste the clipboard content + selection rather than just the selection, so I've had to set it back to default now. 🤣

[starball5]

@pfeerick oh interesting. Are you aware of "editor.selectionClipboard": false,? See also https://stackoverflow.com/q/36723333/11107541

[Poikilos]

Then all combinations of language, macOS/Linux/Windows, work/personal would need to be separate profiles.

If you have a work and personal account on your linux/macOS/Windows machine, that is 6 accounts. If you need it that fine-grained, you could already just put the setting in your user profile. It isn't directly related to this. There is no way to detect if you are work or personal...that is a user-level abstract distinction.

[pfeerick]

@pfeerick oh interesting. Are you aware of "editor.selectionClipboard": false,? See also

No I wasn't... thanks for that!. It fixes the "double" paste (one from selection, one from clipboard), but does mean you must use the clipboard if using middleClickBehavior": "paste", so still not ideal. Spotted terminal.integrated.copyOnSelection as well though which I didn't know about... that would work if just working with terminal, and not wanting to mix editor and terminal.

[alexchexes]

In the meantime (the discussion has lasted 8 years and doesn't seem to be progressing), how do you all set a comfortable font when switching machines? On my MacBook, I'm good with a 12px font, but on my Windows machine, I need at least 14px. What do you do in such cases (when Settings Sync is On)?

[sanmai-NL]

You can use settings profiles nowadays. Maybe you can template them?

[alexchexes]

@sanmai-NL
Could you please provide a bit more detail about your suggestion? I checked out the VSCode documentation, but it seems that templates refer to a predefined set of configurations used for different programming languages or common environments. Not sure how I could use that to keep all my settings in sync while having different font sizes on Mac and Windows...

[sanmai-NL]

I mean templating VS Code settings with an external tool, and putting the per-OS outputs in a dotfiles repository.

[hermes85pl]

What do you do in such cases (when Settings Sync is On)?

@alexchexes, one solution would be to treat such settings as device-specific and put them under settingsSync.ignoredSettings.

[iwangbowen]

Any updates