Add support for Write-Progress cmdlet

[HairyCream]

The following code, when executed using the debugger, will show the Write-Host output, but not the Write-Progress output.
for ($i = 1; $i -le 10; $i++ ) {write-progress -activity "Search in Progress" -status "$i% Complete:" -percentcomplete $i; Write-Host "Seconds Passed: " $i; Start-Sleep 1}

[daviwil]

Thanks for filing this. I'll have to see if there's a reasonable way to show progress in VS Code other than just writing progress lines to the console text.

[thoughtentity]

One possible thought for showing progress for long running PowerShell operations would be to pipe Write-Progress message as status bar messages in VS Code. I believe the API was designed to show ephemeral messages as it supports automatically expiring messages based on a timeout or Disposable. VS Code also uses the status bar area to show long running git operations (spinning icon during git push and pull).

[rkeithhill]

That thought occurred to me as well. One issue is that Write-Progress can support up to three separate strings that should all be displayed: Activity, Status and CurrentOperation in addition to a percent complete value. Another issue is that Write-Progress supports multiple active, potentially nested progress bars.

Maybe the extension needs to create a UI for progress records kind of like ISE does where the UI is display at the top of the console pane. Not sure if that is possible with VSCode.

[daviwil]

Yeah, we currently don't have the ability to create custom UI in VS Code. @thoughtentity's idea is a good one, but like Keith says, PowerShell progress bars can get pretty complex so the status bar might not be the best place to represent that. We'll have to look for a creative solution for showing progress in more complex scenarios.

[ChrisLynchHPE]

Looking forward to this feature. I have a number of build scripts that I use Write-Progress and currently with 0.10.0 am unable to see the output from. If I use the integrated console (powershell.exe) separately from the vscode-powershell plugin 'Integrated PowerShell Console', Write-Progress does output, and very well I might add.

[daviwil]

Yep, I've basically written my own ConsoleHost so I have to implement my own version of Write-Progress in this case. I'll probably try to borrow the implementation from PowerShell Core which isn't as pretty but gets the job done.

[andysimmons]

I don't know if it'll handle the complexity of PS progress bars yet, but there are some new APIs in the latest (1.12.1) VS Code release that might be interesting.

https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_12#_extension-authoring

Awesome extension, by the way.

[daviwil]

Thanks Andy! Yep, I've considered using that but not sure if it will be a good UX. I'll experiment with it pretty soon :)

[stephenbonar]

Version 1.0 seems much more stable than the pre-release versions, I find myself using the PowerShell ISE less and less! I'm definitely looking forward to Write-Progress functioning in the integrated console, but until then, I at least have the workaround of adding a powershell.exe console in the integrated terminal, which still shows progress.

[crshnbrn66]

I too have been using VScode more and more and less and less ISE.

[daviwil]

I've got an idea on how I might be able to reuse PowerShell's existing progress display, will experiment with this a bit and hopefully get it working in 1.3 or 1.4.