Add an option to turn off auto environment discovery if an interpreter is explicitly selected

[LeanderK]

I am using vscode on a remote ssh connection where my work and environment is on a shared network-drive. When I connect "Discovering Python Interpreters" just takes ages (waiting for 15 minutes). Maybe it's important: The shared network-drive is multiple terabytes with different projects of different people and has some latency. Maybe it's searching through too many conda installations?

Can I just disable it? I have already chosen my interpreter.

I don't know which logs to provide, they don't seem relevant? I don't see anything regarding the search of interpreters.

[karthiknadig]

Thanks for the feature request! We are going to give the community 60 days from when this issue was created to provide 7 👍 upvotes on the opening comment to gauge general interest in this idea. If there's enough upvotes then we will consider this feature request in our future planning. If there's unfortunately not enough upvotes then we will close this issue.

[karrtikr]

First reported in #18200 (comment).

@LeanderK Please try the following VSIX https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-python/suites/5609518918/artifacts/182361458 and let me know if it helps: Use Extension: Install from VSIX... command to install the VSIX. Discovery, however long it takes, should not be blocking rest of your work.

[Tma2333]

Same issues here, discovering interpreter take a very long time when work with NAS based server dev environment. There are multiple feature are gated behind discovering interpreter, such as notebook kernel selection and Linting.

[brettcannon]

Thank you to everyone who upvoted this issue! Since the community showed interest in this feature request we will leave this issue open as something to consider implementing at some point in the future.

We do encourage people to continue 👍 the first/opening comment as it helps us prioritize our work based on what the community seems to want the most.

[karrtikr]

@Tma2333 @LeanderK Hi everyone, #19102 now ensures auto discovery is only triggered if a user attempts to choose a different interpreter via UI (given Jupyter is not installed). Try the latest pre-release, activate the extension, auto-discovery should no longer happen:

We can probably close this issue.

[sbrl]

@karrtikr I have not selected a different interpreter via the UI, and I still the infinite Discovering Python Interpreters infinitely sitting there blocking other extensions from executing. This is on Ubuntu Desktop 20.04.

[karrtikr]

@sbrl Note Jupyter still triggers discovery at startup (see #19102 (comment)), so maybe you have that extension installed/enabled?

[karrtikr]

Closing in favor of #18647 (comment). This problem will be solved for Jupyter with #19101.