incorrectly saved pythonLocator setting on remote settings

[eleanorjboyd]

issue posted on: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-python.vscode-python-envs&ssr=false#review-details from user Shunliang Zhang.

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"I want to auto source the .venv in the root directory of my program. But it identify and source the wrong path. And I didn't find any method to correct the path. Finally found it in .vscode-server/data/User/globalStorage/ms-python.vscode-python-envs/pythonLocator. It works after delete the wrong path manually in the json."

[eleanorjboyd]

Triage Notes

What's happening: The native Python finder caches discovered environment paths in globalStorage/ms-python.vscode-python-envs/pythonLocator/. When a .venv path changes or becomes stale, the cached (wrong) path persists and gets used instead of re-discovering.

Relevant code:

• src/managers/common/nativePythonFinder.ts — getCacheDirectory() (line 1409) sets the cache path, and the native tool reads/writes cached results there via --cache-directory.

Workaround: We already have a user-facing command "Python Environments: Clear Cache" (python-envs.clearCache) in the command palette that calls clearCacheDirectory() and clears all manager caches. The user could have used this instead of manually editing the JSON.

Potential improvements:

1. Discoverability — The "Clear Cache" command exists but isn't obvious to users hitting this problem. Consider surfacing it in error scenarios or documenting it more prominently.
2. Cache invalidation — The cache could be smarter about detecting when a workspace .venv no longer exists at the cached path and automatically invalidating stale entries.
3. Cache staleness check — Add a file-existence check before using a cached .venv path.

[eleanorjboyd]

The caching and validation happens entirely inside the PET (Python Environment Tools) native binary — not in our TypeScript code. We pass --cache-directory to PET and trust whatever it returns. Our code at line 243 only checks that prefix, executable, and version are present — but does not verify the executable actually exists on disk.

cc Karthik Nadig (@karthiknadig) is this a change we can make on PET to fix this? So we do a check for an executable actually existing before returning it from cache?

[shunliang233]

Triage Notes

What's happening: The native Python finder caches discovered environment paths in globalStorage/ms-python.vscode-python-envs/pythonLocator/. When a .venv path changes or becomes stale, the cached (wrong) path persists and gets used instead of re-discovering.

Relevant code:

• src/managers/common/nativePythonFinder.ts — getCacheDirectory() (line 1409) sets the cache path, and the native tool reads/writes cached results there via --cache-directory.

Workaround: We already have a user-facing command "Python Environments: Clear Cache" (python-envs.clearCache) in the command palette that calls clearCacheDirectory() and clears all manager caches. The user could have used this instead of manually editing the JSON.

Potential improvements:

1. Discoverability — The "Clear Cache" command exists but isn't obvious to users hitting this problem. Consider surfacing it in error scenarios or documenting it more prominently.
2. Cache invalidation — The cache could be smarter about detecting when a workspace .venv no longer exists at the cached path and automatically invalidating stale entries.
3. Cache staleness check — Add a file-existence check before using a cached .venv path.

Hello, Thanks for explaining! I'm Shunliang. Actually I tried "Python: Clear Cache" (python-envs.clearCache) before manually editing JSON but it doesn't work. By the way, on my command palette it's called "Python: Clear Cache" (python-envs.clearCache) rather than "Python Environments: Clear Cache" but it does provided by Python Environments 1.28.0.

The detail is that my project root path is $HOME/alignment-dev on remote-ssh and python venv is on $HOME/alignment-dev/.venv. Open a integrated terminal will goes to $HOME/alignment-dev directory first, and then Python Environments do source alignment-dev/.venv/bin/activate in this directory, which caused the failure. Python Environments sourced the correct absolute directory source $HOME/alignment-dev/.venv before but suddenly changed to the wrong relative path during my work. I have no idea why it happened suddenly, and cleared the cache but doesn't help. I believe that this relative path must be stored somewhere and finally found it in the JSONs. Both paths are in these JSONs, but absolute one is covered by the relative one. After I deleted the relative path, the absolute one works properly.