feat: implement automatic python discovery for zero-config extension

[Mohamed-Sobea]

Overview

This PR implements automatic Python interpreter discovery as discussed in Issue #13. The goal was to remove the requirement for users to manually configure the python.interpreterpath setting.

Changes

• Added ms-python.python as an extension dependency in package.json.
• Refactored activate() to utilize the official Python Extension API for environment discovery.
• Created a getPythonPath helper to dynamically fetch the active environment.

Testing

• Verified that the extension successfully launches the Language Server in a clean environment without any manual settings.

Demo:

Closes #13

[mstimberg]

Hi @Mohamed-Sobea Thanks for the work on this, and sorry for the late reply/review (I was down with a cold…). This looks basically good to me, although it isn't quite working for me, but that might also have to do with some semi-broken virtual environment setup on my machine. It would be great (also for testing) if this would be even more powerful though, i.e. it would automatically reload the language server when the activated python environment changes. I guess there is some kind of hook from the Python extension that we can use for that? Oh, and something rather trivial: the package.json still defines the (now unused) Brian.python.interpreterpath configuration option.

[Mohamed-Sobea]

Hi @mstimberg, I hope you're feeling much better now.
and thanks for the review. auto restart idea makes total sense. I will work on that now.

[Mohamed-Sobea]

Hi Marcel @mstimberg,

I’ve implemented the hook we discussed. I found the onDidChangeActiveEnvironmentPath event and used it to trigger the server restart.

Changes:

• I removed getPythonPath function. Instead, I now fetch the Python API directly within activate() to set up the event listener and handle the discovery in one place.

• I’ve deleted the Brian.python.interpreterpath from package.json as no longer needed.

About 'not working' issue:
While testing I faced an AttributeError (specifically about TextDocumentContentChangePartial in lsprotocol). It seems like a version conflict between the latest pygls and lsprotocol libraries. I’ll look for the server dependencies issue later.

this is a screenshot of the logs showing the extension successfully detecting and launching from a local virtual environment (stranger_test/.venv) and the AttributeError .

[mstimberg]

Hi @Mohamed-Sobea, I finally had a look! I had to correct the server for the most recent pygls version so that I could actually run it, but it seems to pick up the correct environment on start. I did not quite manage to trigger the environment change/server reload, though. I tried switching to an environment that does not have Brian installed (which should fail), but it did still work? Are you able to test this feature?