Auto Detect SqlFlulf executable from Python Virtual Environment

[aaronclong]

Background

---

Hard coding executable paths into settings.json makes the config completely unportable. People will have different operating systems, and even different folder structures depending how things are installed.

Defining a path variable would also be cumbersome.

It should be noted that different repos might even use different versions, further complicating this practice.

This all came from Issue 133.

Suggestion

---

It would be nice if the config could specify a dependencyManager and directory. The extension could load this.

settings.json

"sqlfluff.dependencyManager": "poetry",
"sqlfluff.projectRoot": "${workspace}/path"

Then the linter provider could spawn a child process and get exec from there.

With poetry, you can dynamically fetch the path from this poetry run which sqlfluff.

const { exec } = require('child_process');
return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
  exec('poetry run which sqlfluff', (error, stdout, stderr) => {
     if (error || stderr) {
        reject(error || stderr);
        return;
     }

    resolve(stdout)
  });
});

In addition, this extension could talk to the Microsoft Python extension and get the virtual environment.

It is defiantly more complex. However, it allows for easy changes to the environment.

https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-python/blob/main/src/client/api.ts#L150C9-L150C21
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50058517/how-to-communicate-between-vscode-extensions/50068416#50068416

[aaronclong]

There doesn't seem to any appetite by the maintainers for addressing these issues (totally fair).

For people struggling with this, I've noticed some over lap with Issue #18.

Likewise, there seems to be an alternative extension, vscode-dbt-power-user, that might better resolve these issues for the time being. However, it doesn't seem to be a true linter

Here are some discussions I found around the issue here:

AltimateAI/vscode-dbt-power-user#3 (comment)

AltimateAI/vscode-dbt-power-user#3 (comment)

#18