workspace.findFiles with exclude pattern behaves differently than documented

[kryops]

• VS Code Version: 1.67.2
• OS Version: macOS 12.4

The current API documentation for workspace.findFiles() contains the following description for the exclude param:

A glob pattern that defines files and folders to exclude. The glob pattern will be matched against the file paths of resulting matches relative to their workspace. When undefined, default file-excludes (e.g. the files.exclude-setting but not search.exclude) will apply. When null, no excludes will apply.

(via https://code.visualstudio.com/api/references/vscode-api)

However, the files.exclude setting does not only seem to be applied by default (or when using undefined as documented), but also when specifying a string exclude pattern. Only when explicitly specifying null, the setting is not applied.

In my use case I want to find some files that are usually hidden from the developer (thus I don't want files.exclude to be applied), but I want to exclude some large directories like node_modules and .git from the search for better performance:

const files = await vscode.workspace.findFiles('**/.development/_typing.d.ts', '**/{node_modules,.git}');

This won't find my files - it only works after replacing my exclude pattern with null.

Is this a bug? Or is the documentation just not clear for this case?

Relevant code:

• vscode/src/vs/workbench/api/common/extHostWorkspace.ts

  Line 442 in 1805df1

  excludePatternOrDisregardExcludes = false;

• vscode/src/vs/workbench/api/browser/mainThreadWorkspace.ts

  Line 149 in 1805df1

  disregardExcludeSettings: (excludePatternOrDisregardExcludes === false) || undefined,

• vscode/src/vs/workbench/services/search/common/queryBuilder.ts

  Line 334 in 1805df1

  return options.disregardExcludeSettings ?

Related issues:

• Revamp findFiles #48674
• Support the new search options in vscode.workspace.findFiles #101889

Thanks for looking into it!

[roblourens]

To me, it's implied that files.exclude is applied by default, then we describe the difference between null/undefined. To me, it would be very confusing to not apply the default excludes when you specify a query, but then to add extra excludes when you pass undefined. In any case, this does lack flexibility for cases like yours, and we do need to revamp this API. I think that's covered by the other issues you found. Sorry that it doesn't currently fit your needs.