Update embedded tasks when editing the file listing all of them

[vycdev]

Original author: suchcodemuchwow
Original created at: 2019-04-11T14:11:19Z
Original URL: fabiospampinato#186

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Hey, I just started to use this extension and it's great. However I have some kind of problem with it. When I add new todo comment in my src files it will not update the todo embedded file. The only option is to recreate the embedded file by using Todo:Open embedded. And It will ignore all things like time stamps and archived items in new file. Are there some kind refresh option available which scans project and update newly added todos and fixme comments.

[vycdev]

Original comment by fabiospampinato at 2019-04-11T15:06:27Z:

The generated file is a fixed file, I don't think we need an option for updating it 🤔 If you want an auto-updating list you should use the activity bar views.

And It will ignore all things like time stamps and archived items in new file.

I'm not sure what you mean by that.

[vycdev]

Original comment by suchcodemuchwow at 2019-04-11T19:18:23Z:

@fabiospampinato I guess I got it now.

It will ignore all things like time stamps and archived items in new file.

I tried to say that it is ignoring the features like start-end time and archived items when I regenerate embedded file based on previous embedded file. But wouldn't it be perfect if it updates fixed file and we have kind of archived items and durations of todo items it can be useful when you try to estimate your new todo items and what you have done so far.

[vycdev]

Original comment by fabiospampinato at 2019-04-11T19:36:49Z:

@suchcodemuchwow I see the value in that, but it would be super tricky to get right I think 🤔 IMHO currently the best workaround for that would be putting a @started(...) tag next to the actual embedded todo comment. The problem with that would be that you'd have to write the timestamp by hand 🤔

I'm not sure what the best solution here could be. I see these options:

1. We could try to somehow refresh the generated file with all embedded todos, but this is tricky, as we would basically have to replicate all the changes you make to each todo to its embedded counterpart, and vice versa.

2. We could add some right-click actions to the embedded view, so that you could start/stop todos from there, and that will basically add @started(...) right after the detected text I guess. But this is also tricky to do, I guess one problem could be that you'd be editing that same file but you didn't save your changes to disk, so we'd be updating the file non properly (and we can't detect is that file is currently open or not).

3. We could add some commands for adding @started(...) etc. pretty much everywhere, but then those shortcuts would probably conflict with other things, which we'd want to avoid.

I don't know, if somebody has better ideas, or is will to try implementing one of these I'm happy to discuss this further, if we can improve the experience when dealing with embedded todos that'd be good.