codefori / codefori/vscode-ibmi

Allow import/export of Object Browser filters

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Description

I work with multiple IBM i systems/partitions all the time (10+). When defining an Object Browser filter, it always belongs to a specific system connection. It would be nice to be able to define a 'global' filter, e.g., for all source files within my personal library (which has the same name across all systems), instead of having to define it for every system connection.
Additionally, when working on projects with multiple developers, having the ability to export a set of filters and allow other developers to import those in their environment would be very handy, just to make sure everyone works with the same setup.
This could even be extended to servers, connection settings, and actions. (These are all part of the settings.json file).
The ultimate goal is to improve productivity and minimize configuration errors for our development teams.

Some ideas:

1. When creating a filter, have a checkbox for 'Global' which would then make that filter available for all servers. If a new server is defined later, that global filter would also need to show for that new server (so it would not be sufficient to simply add the same filter definition to all connections defined at that point in the settings.json file).
2. On the list of servers, add a right-click options on any server to export its definition, which would ideally prompt for what exactly to export, e.g., login settings (excluding the user profile), connection settings (maybe even offer to include/exclude each setting), object browser filters (maybe even offer to select filters to include/exclude).
3. On the 'Servers' pane, add a new icon next to the 'New Connection/Sort/Refresh/Connect to Previous IBM i' icons, to allow importing from an export file. Importing should then merge whatever is in the file being imported into the existing settings.json.
4. On the 'Work with Actions' tab, next to 'New Action' and 'Duplicate', add Export and Import buttons.

In the end, these features are all centered around the settings.json file.

(Note: this is mostly for a non-git setup, as filters don't apply in a git/streamfile setup, and actions in a git env are managed in the .vscode/actions.json file)

Alternatives:
We could probably write some tooling ourselves to extract certain portions of the settings.json file and import it into another settings.json file, etc., but that's a questionable practice at best.

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