Inconsistent behaviour of cell variables in VS Code and CLI

[tofraa]

As described in the manual here.

Works perfectly in VS Code, but does not seem to work at all when running in the CLI. This should at least be noted in the documentation, or preferably be implemented in the CLI.

Testet with latest version of the cli from main branch.

[sourishkrout]

Hi @tofraa, Could you please share the example you used to verify the discrepancy?

This sounds like a bug, not an intentional shortcoming that we would highlight in the docs.

[tofraa]

See screenshot below, seems like its working in the embedded VS Code terminal, by in my regular shell this inconsistent behaviour is manifested. The right side of the screenshot it the terminal. I expect that the same behaviour would be present on CI/CD runners which runs with a basic shell.

It's on macOS with zsh. Haven't testet on linux (yet).

[sourishkrout]

Thanks for the clarification, @tofraa. This helps tremendously.

See screenshot below, seems like its working in the embedded VS Code terminal

You did indeed identify the exact reason why this is working versus not working. The integrated VS Code terminal automatically receives the configuration required to share sessions transparently across notebooks and terminals. This is all the same on macOS, Linux, and WSL/Windows.

External terminals are siloed, so configuring them is more complicated. The good news is that we're actively working on this.

You do have a point that we could make the limitations more clear in the documentation. We will keep you posted once we've unlocked external terminals, too.

Could you share more details about the CI/CD use case? I do think running x-session in CI/CD is already possible.