Hover over types could be more useful

[vsmenon]

Right now, if I hover on Future, I see the following:

I see similar hovering on anything that is a type. At a minimum, shouldn't see the getObject error. It'd be nice to show any relevant info (e.g., where it's defined, links) if possible.

FYI - @annagrin

[vsmenon]

Alternatively, is there a way to suppress and trigger whatever the editor would do statically?

E.g., when I'm stopped at a breakpoint in VSCode and I hover over a symbol in the same file, I get eval - i.e., the above when I hover on Future. If I move to a different file (or I'm not at a breakpint), I get the static doc for a class symbol instead - e.g., the dartdoc for Future.

@DanTup

[DanTup]

Alternatively, is there a way to suppress and trigger whatever the editor would do statically?

Unfortunately not - this came up at microsoft/vscode#48747 (comment) and although we can make it trigger the static hover provider, it won't render the results(!).

I still think it's a good idea though, so since there's no existing issue about it, I've opened microsoft/vscode#99856 to see if it could be considered. If it was implemented as an option, then maybe having it automatically fall back to that if the debug provide returns nothing (or a specific type of a result) would be even better.

What you're seeing for now, is the debugger evaluating the expression under the cursor (Future<CardSet>) which returns a Type. We then call the VM Service's getObject on that type but in this case it returns an error.

We could add special handling for types if there's something better to do, but we should ensure the real VM and web proxy behave roughly the same, so that what we do makes sense in both cases.

[devoncarew]

...which returns a Type. We then call the VM Service's getObject on that type but in this case it returns an error

It sounds like this issue is about improving package:dwds's support for the vm_service Type object.

[vsmenon]

Good point about consistency. Here's the same on the VM / MacOS:

No error, though it'd be nice to show static info here too.