formatting is sometimes blocked by IntelliSense parsing

[daltairwalter]

I frequently see cases where formatting is blocked by intelliSense parsing. This causes a lot of problems because format on save still saves the files, but they are unformatted. This is a significant problem because then they go into our source control and then when someone else modifies them the formatting happens and then the diffs become a mess.

Aside from this, the C++ IntelliSense in VSCode is both really useful and really buggy. I would LOVE a feature to temporarily disable it and turn it back on. This would solve several problems with IntelliSense like:

1. how do I know if the problems currently showing are current or based on an old scan?
2. Is IntelliSense going to be smart enough to rescan for my recent changes?
3. If I make changes before IntelliSense started its scan and I would like to stop it and have it start over. It is slow and having it finish its pass takes a lot of time.

C++ extension 0.16.1
Version 1.22.2
Commit 3aeede733d9a3098f7b4bdc1f66b63b0f48c1ef9
Date 2018-04-12T16:38:45.278Z
Shell 1.7.12
Renderer 58.0.3029.110
Node 7.9.0
Architecture x64

[sean-mcmanus]

Yeah, we've had fixing the IntelliSense blocking issue on our backlog for too long. @bobbrow I think we should just put all the messages that can block from IntelliSense (hover, etc.) on to a separate thread and allow things like formatting and go to definition to not get blocked, which should be a pretty quick fix, since I'm not sure when we'll get around to a more extensive solution.

You can turn intellisense on or off via changing the intelliSenseEngine setting.

I also get stale/incorrect squiggles randomly/frequently too while editing. We're supposed to pick up edits and re-queue the squiggles.

[daltairwalter]

The "C_Cpp.intelliSenseEngine" has two options "Default" and "Tag Parser" - is "Tag Parser" off?

[bobbrow]

"Tag Parser" is not off, just a less accurate form of IntelliSense. If you switch to that one, everything is a DB lookup, but there is no symbol awareness so squiggles are turned off. It should definitely resolve your current problem with formatting not happening.

@sean-mcmanus, I agree, let's put in a stop-gap fix at least for formatting and code browsing until I can fix the message/task architecture.

[harikrishnan94]

Will the fix be released in 0.22.0 version?

[sean-mcmanus]

Not sure yet -- the change is still being tested. It works in general, but there are some special cases we're still investigating, with possible fixes needed.

[sean-mcmanus]

We fixed the main cause of formatting getting stuck with 0.22.0-insiders3 -- let us know if this is still a problem for you. It's possible there may be cases where formatting could still get stuck, but they should be pretty rare now.

[harikrishnan94]

Thanks it’s working for me.