editor stalls and becomes unresponsive

[ashtonlamont]

I have newly installed the Wordpress Playground on VSCode Mac. I have attempted to turn off almost every extension I have in an effort to debug my issue. I can start the server via the Button and it issues a localhost:8881 and my mode is 'wordpress'. I have a new site clone in a github managed local directory. When I first start up and make edits as long as I save VERY frequently the site and settings will save well. If I take time to think about something or make several adjustments then hit save the button spins forever. It knows the server is running vs when it isn't. When it isn't I clearly see the server is not running error. The code seems to be aware the server is up but their either is nothing listening or returning a response to the browser to indicate the save was successful or not. I can then verify that the I can't open a new tab to the site either. It just spins forever with no return. Again making me think the request is making it to the server but no response as well as no timeout is occurring. I have yet to wait long enough to see it timeout on it's own. I eventually just start and stop the server via the extension button. This resolves the issue temporarily to make my next save but the issue keeps repeatedly happening. Making everything take much longer than it should and some edits get lost when I don't notice the issue and shutdown. I can't find a ticket with similar issue, I am thinking their is not enough memory allocated in an INI or something else I am missing in the setup with this extension. Any help/clarification would be helpful to getting this working smoothly.

This issue only takes 15-30s of idle time typically to reproduce and I need to restart server every 30-60s.

[adamziel]

@ashtonlamont the VS Code extension haven't been released in a while so it is very possible it still suffers from a memory leak that was fixed in upstream Playground. Furthermore, the extension runs the same code as wp-now which is about to be replaced by @wp-playground/cli.

A fix would involve replacing wp-now with Playground CLI in the VS Code extension here and releasing a new version. @fellyph, would you have any interest in exploring that (and getting exposure to the extension)?

Meanwhile, @ashtonlamont – I'm really curious, how are you using the VS Code extension? Would the CLI tool be a worthy replacement? Or is there something about the extension that can't be easily replaced with CLI?

[ashtonlamont]

Well @adamziel, I was looking for something to improve my extension library in VSCode and just came across it and it sounded ideal for me. I work with non-profits on occasion that have typically contracted to have sites made and I and others have provided free services through "Techies for Good". So I was looking for something that I could quickly download a site and spin it up on my local environment to better debug. In an effort to look at themes, plugins, and other issues quickly.

In the case of my non-profits, most have 0 IT or Dev staff. So they need a very simple approach. Even finding things in WordPress can become overwhelming for the staff to remember something they edit 1 or 2 times a year. Let alone looking deeper into the site for why an issue happens with say bookings, shopping cart, etc.  I was trying to find a simple way to allow them to access and not break their production workspaces.

I also have done historically a lot of marketing related work to custom back ends. Sometimes WordPress has not been the most ideal for these custom backend api's and I wanted to explore more options to offload dev time to marketing or account management personal that could be storing work in Git controlled environment via VSCode but making edits in what feels like natural WordPress environment.

Most of these people I am thinking of would not be comfortable with traditional CMD cli's. I was thinking this could be a great tool to bridge gaps between departments, roles, and responsibilities where a developer is not available.