URI vs URL and going forward

[jrieken]

Nobody can say that I haven't tried... In fact, I have tried twice but "fixing" our uri implementation isn't possible anymore.

Basically there are two camps - camp A correctly says that our URI has encoding/decoding issues and looses data. After fixing said issues, camp B correctly says that the URI behaviour has changed and breaks their extensions/persisted data. We are dead in the water as it seems and we need to find a way forward.

Generally, the URI doesn't cause trouble when its used "internally", e.g. renderer talking to extension host or other pieces, but its decode/encode problems show when interacting with a 3rd player, usually a browser when clicking a link or when calling vscode.env.openExternal. Instead of changing the whole of our uri we should look at those problems specifically and I believe the way out is the use of the standard URL-object, e.g places that feed urls into the system, namely link detection and openExternal, should accept an URL-object in addition to our URI object. While adding overload/confusion it provides a clear separation and ends our catchup game.

[jrieken]

Work packages

• use URL string for our internal link detection. This will help with the majority of cases, like this Uri#parse can break path-component #45515
• support URL in our API, namely openExternal and DocumentLinkProvider. This will help with custom links, like here Links in markdown are broken if url contains encoded parameters #79474

[Tyriar]

🎉 assigned #74604 to Nov to remind me to fix in terminal

[jrieken]

@mjbvz fyi - I have pushed a716943 which helps with links that are rendered in Webviews.

[jrieken]

To verify

• use this link https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/brewlangerie.appspot.com/o/products%2FzVNZkudXJyq8bPGTXUxx%2FBetterave-Sesame.jpg?alt=media&token=0b2310c4-3ea6-4207-bbde-9c3710ba0437
• have it inside an editor and click on it from the editor (not markdown)
• have it in a markdown-file and click on it from the markdown preview
• have it as jsdoc-markdown hover and click on it from there
• have it in the terminal (echo ...) and click on it from there
• in ALL cases it should show a loaf of bread