Configuring a non-existing browser alias fails silently

[TylerLeonhardt]

Testing #220989

Not sure if this is possible, but I set the workbench.externalBrowser to firefox even though I don't have Firefox... then I tried to open something and nothing happened. I was confused because I thought I had Firefox installed, but I guess I remembered incorrectly!

I think something like this is increasingly important in the workspace-setting level. Sure, the protection of this is behind Workspace Trust... but I don't seem to get any notification or indication that there's a setting applied that influences how VS Code opens the browser or if it's going to no-op.

Considering this setting influences things like user auth flows, I think we should try to do something here. I was surprised that no browser was opened when I attempted to log in to a GitHub extension... which makes sense if this setting is set to something invalid.

[bpasero]

I think this might be reported as sindresorhus/open#272 and misses a fix or workaround.

If someone has an idea, either by contributing to https://github.com/sindresorhus/open or seeing what we can do here:

vscode/src/vs/platform/native/electron-main/nativeHostMainService.ts

Lines 510 to 538 in 00374b8

	private async openExternalBrowser(url: string, defaultApplication?: string) {
	const configuredBrowser = defaultApplication ?? this.configurationService.getValue<string>('workbench.externalBrowser');
	if (!configuredBrowser) {
	return shell.openExternal(url);
	}
	if (configuredBrowser.includes(posix.sep) || configuredBrowser.includes(win32.sep)) {
	const browserPathExists = await Promises.exists(configuredBrowser);
	if (!browserPathExists) {
	this.logService.error(`Configured external browser path does not exist: ${configuredBrowser}`);
	return shell.openExternal(url);
	}
	}
	try {
	const { default: open } = await import('open');
	await open(url, {
	app: {
	// Use `open.apps` helper to allow cross-platform browser
	// aliases to be looked up properly. Fallback to the
	// configured value if not found.
	name: Object.hasOwn(open.apps, configuredBrowser) ? open.apps[(configuredBrowser as keyof typeof open['apps'])] : configuredBrowser
	}
	});
	} catch (error) {
	this.logService.error(`Unable to open external URL '${url}' using browser '${configuredBrowser}' due to ${error}.`);
	return shell.openExternal(url);
	}
	}

[vs-code-engineering]

This bug has been fixed in the latest release of VS Code Insiders!

@TylerLeonhardt, you can help us out by commenting /verified if things are now working as expected.

If things still don't seem right, please ensure you're on version 36e4ddb of Insiders (today's or later - you can use Help: About in the command palette to check), and leave a comment letting us know what isn't working as expected.

Happy Coding!

[TylerLeonhardt]

It appears that this is fixed by opening the default instead of what is configured. That makes sense to me.