Can ChatView position be applied in currently active perspective without resetting it?

[hithisispolarbear]

Hi, and thank you again for your support in issues #2814 and #3081. With your help, we've successfully configured the ChatView position in the default perspectives.

However, for first-time-installation users, the ChatView position does not take effect in the currently active perspective unless they manually click "Reset Perspective." (It can take effect when opening a new perspective.)

While we are technically able to reset the current perspective programmatically, we’ve avoided doing so to prevent disrupting the user experience.

Is there a way to apply the ChatView position in the currently active perspective without requiring a reset?

[iloveeclipse]

Shouldn't be the case, sounds like a bug. As usually, can you please provide a simple self contained plugin that mimics exact the contribution of the view, so one could quickly reproduce & debug that?

"Reset" of the perspective shouldn't be different from the first time creating perspective from the contributed extensions.

[hithisispolarbear]

Apologies for the confusion in my earlier message, and thank you for pointing that out.

You're absolutely right — resetting a perspective is functionally equivalent to creating it from the contributed extensions. That part of the behavior aligns with your previous guidance and works as expected.

The issue we're encountering is slightly different:

1. Eclipse users work with customized perspectives — for example, a personalized Debug perspective they've tailored over time. These layouts are likely cached locally. Let's call it "currently active perspective."
2. When such a user installs GitHub Copilot, the ChatView appears correctly in newly opened or reset perspectives.
3. However, if the user prefers to stay in their customized, currently active perspective, the ChatView does not appear in the intended position.

We’re wondering if there’s a way to programmatically update or influence the layout of an already customized, active perspective — without forcing a reset — so that the ChatView appears in the desired location.

Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

[merks]

I would caution against "forcing" the view to appear and if you do it anyway to do so with caution. I've never had a view suddenly appear and I would never expect such a thing to happen. If done poorly, it might always end up being added to every perspective each time and there will definitely be users who would consider that behavior a bug and will come complaining to the Platform.

When a new feature is installed, the welcome screen is opened. That's a good place to add an action to open the view. Of course getting anyone to read it is a challenge.

We do have the ability to produce notifications to inform the users about important or interesting things, e.g.,

https://www.eclipse.org/setups/notification/release/

We could use that mechanism to inform people about the interesting new support for copilot when it's available...

[vogella]

@hithisispolarbear you can access the application model via API and adjust layout in case of a layout switch. See here for the model API: https://www.vogella.com/tutorials/Eclipse4Services/article.html#searching-model-elements

You could listen to one of the fitting model events, see https://www.vogella.com/tutorials/Eclipse4ModelEvents/article.html

To see the running model with a UI use Windows-> Spies -> Model spy

[hithisispolarbear]

Thank you @vogella! I’ll take a closer look and explore the model API and event listeners. Appreciate the guidance!