Setting python.analysis.nodeExecutable in the user settings affects how pylance gets launched on VSCode remote

[fsouza]

Opening as a question because I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong or not. I sometimes use VSCode locally, and other times I use it remote (different use cases). The problem is that when I set python.analysis.nodeExecutable in the user settings, pylance tries to use that path on the remote server, despite the user settings graying out the setting, which implies that it shouldn't be used on remote?

For example, assuming I set python.analysis.nodeExecutable to /opt/homebrew/opt/node@20/bin/node on macOS, and then try to connect to a remote, Pylance fails to start with the error message:

2024-04-26 19:26:48.835 [info] (Client) Pylance async client (2024.4.1) started with python extension (2024.4.1)
2024-04-26 19:26:48.856 [info] [Error - 7:26:48 PM] Pylance client: couldn't create connection to server.
2024-04-26 19:26:48.856 [info] Launching server using command /opt/homebrew/opt/node@20/bin/node failed. Error: spawn /opt/homebrew/opt/node@20/bin/node ENOENT

If I open the user settings, python.analysis.nodeExecutable is grayed out with a message that reads "This setting cannot be applied in this window. It will be applied when you open a local window.", which is a bit confusing. Screenshot:

Is that the expected behavior or am I doing something wrong?

[heejaechang]

ah, sounds like a bug. we should ignore this when it is used in remote. putting it in triage so we can determine when we should fix this.

[rchiodo]

On the remote machine you should be using the machine wide settings.json. For me that's somewhere like so:

/home/user/.vscode-server/Machine/settings.json

This settings.json should take precedence over the user settings.json.

I think the bug here is we're picking up the local setting if the remote setting isn't set.