VS Code Command Palette Commands

[MarcusFelling]

It would be nice to have Command Palette commands for common Bicep operations.

These commands could assist with things like running Bicep Build and inserting snippets, similar to VS Code ARM Tools:

On the Microsoft side, Command Pallete commands are trackable and could help us better understand the Bicep authoring experience. Quickstarts and other docs could reference these to help with adoption.

[majastrz]

Can you provide examples of the commands that you would like to see in our extension?

[MarcusFelling]

I think it would be nice to run the 3 commands Alex has listed in this issue: #858 (after the integration is complete?), but I think the real value would come from inserting snippets, where the palette acts as a wizard to fill in values.

Example using the ARM tools:

1. Ctrl + Shift + P
2. Type "ARM" -> Insert Item
   
3. Resource
   
4. App Service Plan
   
5. Snippet gets added
   

We could even go a step further to fill in the required property values OR the user can skip and select all defaults.

[MarcusFelling]

To add to this, there could be a cmd to deploy which opens a new terminal with CLI values populated for the bicep file that's in focus. Depending on the scope, the user could use the palette to select a subscription, resource group, management group, or tenant (similar to Azure Resource Groups extension)

[ucheNkadiCode]

@StephenWeatherford and @bhsubra I think we should ultimately split this into each work item, bicep build, etc, we can discuss later

[StephenWeatherford]

Not sure there's actually any work to do here. Placing things in the command palette is part of hooking up any command. We currently have these exposed there:

Although they only show when you have a bicep file opened (which in my mind is a little weird).

[majastrz]

Agree that we can probably close this issue, but the commands listed above do require a Bicep file to be active.

[ucheNkadiCode]

Thanks for that information @StephenWeatherford and @majastrz! I believe we should make our Bicep commands listed at all times, even if a user doesn't not have a bicep file in the directory. There is a precedent set that if a user installs our extension, they want Bicep available. I think what we should do the default behavior in the picture below.

If the user does not have a bicep file in the directory, we can fail gracefully and ask if they want us to create an empty Bicep file with their permission in the root directory.

This would happen if they run any Bicep command that requires a Bicep file to be present (aka any of our current commands). In the case of Docker extension, we have "Add dockerfiles to workspace" which is of course accessible at any point in your dev cycle.

But I'll make a seperate issue for this because this behavior does exist.