Improve how to surface that an interpreter needs to be selected

[bbrendon]

Environment data

VS Code version: 1.19.1
OS and version: Linux (I'm guessing Windows also has this issue)

Actual behavior

• Errors lead me down a road of failure.

Expected behavior

• Errors that lead me down a road of success.

Steps to reproduce:

• Setup a python 3 dev environment

Summary

See #266 (comment)

Basically, right now VS Code is unfriendly when dealing with errors setting up a code environment. Even --verbose is not that helpful.

To paraphrase the other issue:

The UI says Python in the bottom right hand corner and I have everything python working except Code thinks otherwise (errors in this issue).

How am I supposed to know that I need to pick and interpreter when Python is already selected? The system doesn't tell you that. It just throws meaningless errors.

Maybe you can combine or connect the interpreter and language mode features.

[brettcannon]

I don't quite follow what you're asking for? It's outlined in the official tutorial that you need to select your Python interpreter. And we don't want to go overboard with banners saying you need to select an interpreter as it's reasonable to edit a file without an interpreter selected.

[benuklove]

@bbrendon I was having the same issue on Ubuntu 16.04. My solution was:

1. Setup a virtualenv
2. Change User Settings in VSCode:

Place your settings here to overwrite the Default Settings

{
    "workbench.colorTheme": "Visual Studio Dark",
    "python.pythonPath": "/path/to/venv/bin/python3"
}

This allowed me to install pylint with no problems.

Maybe @brettcannon or @DonJayamanne can indicate if this is a decent solution or not.

[brettcannon]

@benuklove It's an acceptable solution to me.

[bbrendon]

I only created this because @DonJayamanne suggested it and I wasted a long time trying to figure out bogus error messages (as it seems others have as well). I can only make suggestions.

[DonJayamanne]

@bbrendon I suggested creating this as you didn't seem to be happy with the current UX and workflow .

wasted a long time trying to figure out bogus error messages

This is what I'd like to address. And as mentioned in the previous issue, we will be addressing this soon.

[brettcannon]

I've changed the title to try and reflect that the request is for better surfacing of the need to choose an interpreter while we wait to hear suggestions on what would be expected in an ideal scenario.

[brettcannon]

We've done a bunch of work since this was initially reported in automatically selecting an interpreter for people. Is this still not working as expected?

[benuklove]

@bbrendon have you created any new Python environments lately?
If I'm not mistaken, my USER SETTINGS tries to take care of selecting the interpreter. But I usually change it in my WORKSPACE SETTINGS when I create a new virtualenv or pipenv.
And of course #811 and #266 are done, so, it looks good to me.

[brettcannon]

Because we have not heard back with the information we requested, we are closing this issue for now. If you are able to provide the info later on then we will be happy to re-open this issue to pick up where we left off.