make finding all references more user-friendly

[ramya-rao-a]

From @bruceauyeung on March 7, 2017 8:45

Finding all references will popup a window to show all references, i think it's a little hard to use, i am not blaming vscode-go, maybe it's vscode's limitation because vscode don't provide a view similar with output, problem etc.

1. once user close the popped-up window, referencing results is lost. user have to find all references again if they just closed the window by accident. most other IDEs such as Eclipse, Gogland, they display references in a view , the referencing results will not be lost until user do finding all references again.
2. user may close the window by accident very easily. currently the window have a close button, a window bar, if user single-click the left part of menu bar or drag the window on left part of menu bar( mouse pointer becomes to a finger when hovering on it, this indicates user can do something ), window will be closed.

so i suggest:

1, if it's possible, display references in a view similar with problem etc, not in a popup window. if not,
2, do not close window when left part of menu bar is clicked or dragged, only close window when close button is close or content part of window is double-clicked.

Copied from original issue: microsoft/vscode-go#845

[ramya-rao-a]

@Microsoft/vscode thoughts?

[aozgaa]

One suggestion: populate a left-side tab/button (along the lines of Explorer, Search, etc.) with the search results and then allow clicking/wheeling/scrolling through the results. This probably shouldn't re-use the current Search view as one might want to retain both lists of results.

[mejamiewilson]

I'm a big fan of using the panel part for this (where Output / Problems etc live). Rift view is great for things that are relevant to the piece of code you're looking at as it keeps context of where you launched it (peek definition works perfectly), but for something that touches / references multiple files the way the References view does, it makes sense for it to be docked and therefore visible across files.

Adding a 'References' tab to the bottom panel, and rendering the references rift view in it would be 90% of the work needing to be done. Knowing how to keep the context of the original token clicked / code referenced would be the UX concern needing most work.

This ticket doesn't have much interest, I'd be interested to know if people simply prefer the rift view than one of these suggestions?

[jayars]

+1 from me.

Am in the middle of refactoring a typescript project, and it's getting just a tad painful.

Wishing the results of Find All References can be pinned or made persistent, until manually cleared.

Personally, I think it would fit very well into the Search pane.

[jrieken]

fyi - I once did a sample extension of a virtual document provider which shows results of reference search in a separate (persisted) editor: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=jrieken.references-plusplus

[masaeedu]

Pretty please with sugar on top? It is basically impossible to navigate large codebases when the only tool at my disposal is the Alt+Left history stack. Even a simple feature like "open in new tab" for the find all references view would be a great improvement. Right now I have to get pen and paper to keep things straight.

[stevencl]

Thanks for the feedback. There are a few things we should do:

1. Don't close the peek window when clicking on title bar elements. We should only close when the user presses the close button or presses the Esc key.
2. Add a button that allows the current set of references to be persisted in a read only document, similar to the extension that @jrieken referenced above.
3. Implement cascading peek to avoid losing the set of references when following another set from within the peek window: