Attach to an external terminal for code execution

[jooyoungseo]

Many blind programmers who use screen reader, including myself, open an external terminal and execute Python code there instead of VSCode's integrated terminal. There has been some discussion on making VSCode integrated terminal more accessible in the upstream repo; however, using an external terminal will remain a primary accessible go-to solution for blind programmers.

I understand that there is a way to launch an external console by setting up launch.json, but that's primarily for debugging. I was wondering if there would be any way to attach an external Python repl outside the VSCode and connect the console to VSCode so that users can interactively send Python code from VSCode to the attached external console.

tmux is an alternative solution, but setting it up on Windows platform would be quite tricky unless you use WSL or msys2/Cygwin.

Hopefully, this request could be considered for future improvement.

[karthiknadig]

@jooyoungseo A workaround using launch.json, you can use this configuration to run without debugging, in an external terminal (it is just this set "noDebug": true,). You can also do this with ctrl+F5 shortcut (run without debugging), no need to add noDebug to config:

        {
            "name": "Run without debugging",
            "type": "python",
            "request": "launch",
            "program": "${file}",
            "console": "externalTerminal",
            "purpose": ["debug-in-terminal"],
            "justMyCode": true,
            "noDebug": true,
        }

[jooyoungseo]

Thanks, @karthiknadig. However, this way does not allow line-by-line code execution in the same external terminal because it runs the current file entirely and is different from what I asked.

[brettcannon]

We have talked about redoing our REPL support, which would allow for line-by-line execution. We don't have an ETA of when we would even start that work, but we will keep this issue open to make sure we keep this use case in mind when designing it.

[dzid26]

Thanks, @karthiknadig. However, this way does not allow line-by-line code execution in the same external terminal because it runs the current file entirely and is different from what I asked.

How do you execute Python script line by line in the terminal?

[karthiknadig]

@dzid26 if it is normal execution without debugging then you should be able to send current line to terminal using shift + enter

[cramsuig]

Almost another year. A reminder: having this feature would help blind programmers! And also would be really cool. I come from Atom and this was very handy, especially in a small screen or multiple-monitor setting.

[brettcannon]

The only way I can think of to make this work is launching an external terminal which connects back to VS Code as a client/server, effectively setting up a remote REPL. If that's correct then that isn't a small ask as that involves a REPL from scratch.

And we aren't ignoring this, but we are still working on getting what we already have for REPL support just working appropriately. Once that's done (hopefully soon), we are going to rethink how we expose the REPL and I would expect that would have better accessibility since we would control the UI more directly instead of delegating to the terminal as much.

/cc @anthonykim1

[anthonykim1]

Hello @jooyoungseo and @cramsuig
In regards to accessibility, would shell integration provide you with enough power so that you don't have to launch external Python REPL? (Referring to: microsoft/vscode#199102)

In this upcoming release, Mac and Linux Python REPL users should have access to shell integration's success, failure decorations and run recent command allowed. Unfortunately, command decoration for Windows users is still in the fix and recent command access would not be supported any time soon because of GNU readline dependency reason.
I am sure this shouldn't be big problem once we start building our own REPL from scratch, particularly for VS Code.

I think I have heard from some recording or session that there was accessibility concerns in terms of accessing traceback and outputs from the REPL as well as the command navigation. Is that correct? @jooyoungseo

[jooyoungseo]

I think the recent improvement made in the terminal buffer (AKA, accessible view) has significantly addressed the long-standing accessibility issue and I personally feel okay we close this issue at this moment.