Feature request: improve (repeated) TensorBoard startup

[bersbersbers]

After starting up VS Code, I regularly start up TensorBoard. Two things are annoying that do not need to be:

1. The prompt for the log directory could be omitted if the log directory could be remembered (or even better, configured similar to python.pythonPath).
2. The process could be made persistent*. I have a large log-file directory, and initial parsing takes several minutes until all data are available. I would not mind a TensorBoard process sticking around (and being reused) after closing (and restarting) VS Code.

(*) I usually do this from Python using

with open(log_file, "w") as stdout:
    proc = subprocess.Popen(argv, stdout=stdout, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)

[joyceerhl]

Thanks for the suggestions @bersbersbers, we definitely want to do the first one. Our team will discuss prioritization for both.

[joyceerhl]

@bersbersbers, would the python.tensorBoard.logDirectory setting proposed in #15588 be what you are looking for with your first request?

[bersbersbers]

@bersbersbers, would the python.tensorBoard.logDirectory setting proposed in #15588 be what you are looking for with your first request?

Looks very much like it, yes. Thank you!

[joyceerhl]

Great, thanks for your feedback 😊

[joyceerhl]

@bersbersbers we've added python.tensorBoard.logDirectory as a user-level setting (since there's not a good way to pick the right workspace settings if the current workspace is a multiroot workspace). This will become available in the March release of the Python extension. Thanks again for the feature request!

[bersbersbers]

Thanks! Is a persistent process covered someplace else, or is that off the table for now?