revealFileInOS invoked programatically does not do anything

[Splines]

• Does this issue occur when all extensions are disabled?: Yes
• VS Code Version: 1.95.0, commit 912bb68
• OS Version: Windows 10, Version 22H2. Running VSCode inside WSL2 Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS

Description

Invoking revealFileInOS programatically via a VSCode Extension doesn't do anything (does not even error). Manually invoking this command via the command palette works.

I'd love to invoke this command programatically to provide a command allowing users of our extension to open the extension's log file in their explorer/finder/whatever and then just drag-and-drop this file into a new GitHub issue (instead of pasting the contents in the issue, making it hard to read).

Steps to reproduce

Inside the activate function of a VSCode Extension:

vscode.commands.registerCommand('manim-notebook.openLogFileTest', async () => {
	const myFilePath= vscode.Uri.joinPath(<some-paths-joined-together>);
	await vscode.commands.executeCommand('revealFileInOS', myFilePath); // also tested with myFilePath.fsPath
});

This is inspired by what the built-in TypeScript Language Server does here:

vscode/extensions/typescript-language-features/src/typescriptServiceClient.ts

Lines 580 to 586 in 9ae3d69

	try {
	await vscode.commands.executeCommand('revealFileInOS', this.serverState.server.tsServerLog.uri);
	return true;
	} catch {
	vscode.window.showWarningMessage(vscode.l10n.t("Could not open TS Server log file"));
	return false;
	}

I can verify that myFilePath has a reference to a valid file as expected by executing this beforehand:

const doc = await vscode.workspace.openTextDocument(myFilePath);
await window.showTextDocument(doc);

This correctly opens myFilePath in the editor and shows its contents.

Related issues

• Command revealFileInOS breaks with Explorer view NOT opened #110869.
  I verified that the explorer view is opened in this case. I even added the following beforehand but it still doesn't work.

await vscode.commands.executeCommand('workbench.view.explorer');

• "Reveal in Explorer" hotkey doesn't work #124825.
  The last comment there says: "Ok, so the gist of the issue seems to be "Reveal in Explorer does not work for WSL". Let me reopen..." Interestingly, the issue shows as "closed", even though it was re-opened.
• Hotkey "ctrl+alt+f" of "reveal file in explorer" can't open windows explorer, but file-tab right menu can open it. #92893.
  I'm aware that the hotkey by design adds an additional !editorFocus where-clause. I've even removed that one and the hotkey works fine for me. As expected, it opens the respective file (residing in Linux) in my Windows explorer. It's just that it doesn't work when programatically invoked via the extension.

[Splines]

Note this was already a problem in the prior release 1.94. I've just updated to 1.95 and it's still a problem there.

[vs-code-engineering]

We have a great extension developer community over on GitHub discussions and Slack where extension authors help each other. This is a great place for you to ask questions and find support.

Happy Coding!

[Splines]

Thanks for pointing me to the discussions, I didn't know these existed. If anyone from the Internet stumbles upon this issue in some years, here's what I now came up with to resolve this issue. The problem was that the revealFileInOS command is not working on a WSL remote. Instead, we use the remote-wsl.revealInExplorer command that I found about in this discussion.

/**
 * Opens a file in the OS file explorer.
 * 
 * @param uri The URI of the file to reveal.
 */
async function revealFileInOS(uri: vscode.Uri) {
	if (vscode.env.remoteName === 'wsl') {
		await vscode.commands.executeCommand('remote-wsl.revealInExplorer', uri);
	} else {
		await vscode.commands.executeCommand('revealFileInOS', uri);
	}
}

Then call it like this:

try {
	await revealFileInOS(logFilePath);
} catch (error: any) {
	window.showErrorMessage(`Could not open log file in the`
		+ ` OS file explorer: ${error?.message}`);
}