Exclusion of windows SDK files from search

[fredijude]

Type: Symbol Search Across Files
I am working on a big sized c++ code base. Its takes 10-15 s to bring up the results. But i see results from the windows sdk include files also which i don't want to. Is there any way i can exclude these files from search symbol across files and also increase the speed for the same.

Describe the bug

• OS and Version: Windows 10
• VS Code Version: 1.25.1
• C/C++ Extension Version: 0.17.7

Screenshots

[sean-mcmanus]

Adding folders to search.exclude or files.exclude is supposed to work...but it looks like it's not working correctly for the Windows SDK.

[bobbrow]

I saw similar problems with the exclude yesterday (I was going to recommend it for #1119, but it didn't work). These may be considered the same issue.

[fredijude]

@sean-mcmanus The search exclude and files exclude only excludes files from the current folder which i have opened. Also, I couldn't find any information on any configuration based on which this is done.

Anyways, normal go to file doesn't include these files whereas go to symbol across files brings up matches from these files. It will be great if you guys work on this and solve it or help me solve it.

[sean-mcmanus]

Yeah, the lack of exclusions outside of the workspace is an issue we've had for a long time (see also #1066 )...I thought we had fixed it.

[fredijude]

@sean-mcmanus : In the case of mine, i haven't included the paths, still it picks up and brings up only in symbol search explorer. I don't know why symbol search in workspace looks outside the workspace. I also think it is adding overhead to the performance of symbol search. It would be great if you could dug deep and solve this fundamentally so that performance can also be enhanced.

[bobbrow]

Most users consider the "workspace" to include all libraries required to build a component (STL included). So we pull in symbols based on what is set in compilerPath (or a compiler that we detect if compilerPath is not set) so that IntelliSense can work. If we exclude these, then goto defintion on std types won't work. That may be what you want, so we simply need to make the exclusions work or provide a setting that tells us not to index libraries outside the workspace folder.

[fredijude]

@bobbrow : providing a setting to exclude STLs in search symbol across workspace would do the required. Kindly do give a fix asap.

[fredijude]

@sean-mcmanus , @bobbrow : The Quick fix is highly appreciated. Thanks ! 👍

[bobbrow]

Sure. We're also changing the default to show just symbols in the workspace folder based on our observation of how other extensions behave. And contrary to my comment above, we can do this without causing goto definition to fail for these "external" types.

[fredijude]

@bobbrow : Yeah, i went through the commit. :)

[sean-mcmanus]

We have a build with the fix at https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-cpptools/releases/tag/v0.17.8-insiders if you want to try it out.

[fredijude]

@sean-mcmanus : I installed and experienced the changes. I still believe that this needs an improvement in performance as it still takes more time.

[sean-mcmanus]

There is a known performance problem on the first use of Go to Symbol in Workspace while it builds a cache (see #1686 ), but the later uses should be fast -- is that what you're observing or is it always slow? Also, if there's a red flame in the bottom right (i.e. soon after opening a file), the Go to Symbol messages can be stuck by that (see #1928 ).

[fredijude]

@sean-mcmanus : I agree that the first use of go to symbol in workspace is slow as it build the cache, But why can't this be done as part of project loading only. It will really change the experience for the first time users which will have a drastic impact of the delight towards using the product.

[fredijude]

@sean-mcmanus , @bobbrow :
And i still feel the "Go to Symbol in Workspace" even after caching feels a little unusable. Let me put you through one scenario.
Scenario 1 : I have a class ,say "Tree", which is defined in tree.cpp and i have another class, say "algoA", which has made Tree as a friend class in file algo.cpp . Now as a user when i use "Go to Symbol in Workspace" and search for "tree", my expectation is to go to the class definition of "tree" in tree.cpp. But the search shows tree symbol defined as friend in algo.cpp first. This is definitely making the functionality unusable. I strongly believe the tree in algo.cpp shouldn't appear as it is a usage and the reference list of the symbol should have it.

[sean-mcmanus]

Yeah, the caching work could be done in the background on workspace loading instead of on first use, we just haven't implemented that yet (I think I mention this in #1686 ).

The behavior with friend declarations appearing in the symbol list is inherited from VS 2017, but in that case they show the results with different icons. We could potentially add some option to change this behavior, but we haven't had many requests for this yet. I've created an issue to track this request: #2369 .