Allow extensions to set configuration options.

[mitchdenny]

I've got an extension that I'm currently adding telemetry too so that I can better understand how people are using it, however I want to give users an easy way to opt out of this telemetry collection. My initial thoughts were that I would display a quick pick with two options (agree or disagree) and that I would then store their choice for later executions.

However, it looks like the configuration API for extensions doesn't support the option to set a configuration value. It would be great if I could do something like this:

let configuration = vscode.workspace.getConfiguration('ecdc');
configuration.set('collectTelemetry', false);

I'm sure other extensions would find this useful as well to help guide users to setting up sensitive defaults.

[jrieken]

@mitchdenny You can also use the extension state for storage (https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/extensionAPI/vscode-api#ExtensionContext)

[mitchdenny]

Thanks @jrieken. I'll look into that in the meantime. Are you considering allowing extensions to write settings or is using extension state the better approach for this kind of setting?

[jrieken]

Not decided yet. The model of today is that only the user can modify settings and there is lot of good about that, but also see some shortcomings... The extension state is meant for remembering a user choice, store some installing path etc. This also includes your use-case. Since it's a little touchy (collecting telemetry data) I can understand that you want a more prominent option to unset something like that.

[mitchdenny]

Thanks for getting back to me. Appreciate it.

[jrieken]

Closing as we believe the current story isn't too bad. User manually editor configuration options and extensions can persist settings etc globally/locally

[jrieken]

We have decided to open up that way - giving extensions the power to modify the configuration outweighs the risks.