Unnecessary extra Terminal in IDE

[jankeromnes]

Bug description

When your .gitpod.yml implements a certain number of tasks, there is now always an extra Terminal open in VS Code.

For example, the Gitpod repository specifies three tasks (also known as Terminals):

gitpod/.gitpod.yml

Lines 38 to 46 in 9d4bfb5

	tasks:
	- name: Java
	init: leeway exec --package components/supervisor-api/java:lib --package components/gitpod-protocol/java:lib -- ./gradlew jar
	- name: TypeScript
	before: scripts/branch-namespace.sh
	init: yarn --network-timeout 100000 && yarn build
	- name: Go
	init: leeway exec --filter-type go -v -- go mod verify
	openMode: split-right

However, when opening Gitpod in Gitpod, we observe four Terminals (the top-most one is empty):

Steps to reproduce

1. Open https://gitpod.io/#https://github.com/gitpod-io/gitpod
2. Count the number of Terminals open in VS Code

Workspace affected

No response

Expected behavior

There shouldn't be an unnecessary extra empty Terminal open in VS Code:

• Either we re-use the first empty Terminal for the first task
• Or we close the first empty Terminal when there are tasks in .gitpod.yml

(Note: It is fine to have an empty Terminal open by default when there are no tasks in .gitpod.yml)

Example repository

https://github.com/gitpod-io/gitpod

Anything else?

No response

[akosyakov]

I would say it is rather a bug, but tricky one. We streamlined terminal integration by reusing the pty service from Microsoft and cannot control initial terminals anymore. So if you open a terminal panel and there are not yet terminals contributed by our extension then default pty service will create a new one. Right now we always show the terminal panel, maybe we don't do it. cc @loujaybee @svenefftinge

I removed it from the inbox, since it does not seem to be major issue.

[0Grit]

That terminal doesn't usually have the environment variables I want the users of my workspace to have.

[akosyakov]

That terminal doesn't usually have the environment variables I want the users of my workspace to have.

Could you share steps to reproduce? I tried on gitpod-io/gitpod and seems to be fine there.

[0Grit]

In my case I was adding a tab completion script to .bashrc during init of a prebuild task.
The only way I could think of to ensure the completion script was active for users of my workspace was to exit the prebuild task in the command section.
However the "extra" terminal still remained and did not have my tab completion script active. From recollection it also did not have any of the environment variables I was setting in the prebuild task either.

However, some of this could be related to the other issue I've been battling for a while related to command failures in the init section of a pre-build task. All together it is resulting in a bit of superstition.

The individual commits of this PR tell the story. golioth/example-application#1

[akosyakov]

I think you should add it as a part of Dockerimage. There is no guarantee that something sourced in one terminal can be available in another. There could be different race condition when a regular user terminal is started before task terminals execute any of your commands.

[0Grit]

Problem is, a command I need to run post dockerimage gives me the completion script.

[akosyakov]

Problem is, a command I need to run post dockerimage gives me the completion script.

There is not way to generate the completion script in Dockerimage? It has to be post?

[0Grit]

It technically varies with the version of tooling specified by a config file in the workspace repository. I'm taking a note to dig into this a bit more and see if making sure I get the 'correct' completion script is redundant.