Folder Open Warning

[thatchermo]

The warning displayed when opening a folder: "Positron provides features that may automatically execute files in this folder" raises a few questions: which features are they, under what circumstances may they execute files, and if I don't ever foresee wanting anything to be automatically executed (regardless of whether I trust it or not), how can I turn those features off? On the other hand, I could also believe that the warning is maybe not worded correctly, and it means that "you might execute things in this folder by telling Positron to do something." I'm curious if it could be possible to elaborate on the meaning of this warning.

[thatchermo]

Building on that, based on that warning, I would expect that opening a folder in protected mode would preserve my ability to interact with the code as long as I initiated running it, etc. But based on other discussions, it looks like protected mode prevents basic functionality of Positron from working, like opening a console. I'm not a VSCode user, but some reading seems to indicate that this is related to fundamental VSCode behavior and the fact that Positron functionality is built as extensions? My use case would be openning untrusted code, not running any code from the folder automatically, but having full ability to run the code myself when I initiate it. Is that possible, and if not, could more explanation be given?

[jonvanausdeln]

@thatchermo , Positron is based on VSCode. You can find more information about Workspace trust and restricted mode here https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editing/workspaces/workspace-trust.

Some things of note in Positron when you are in Restricted mode:

• You can't start a terminal inside Positron
• You can't start a console session inside Positron

In the case you mentioned about opening as untrusted code, you would not be able to run the code as it won't be able to start a console or terminal session.

Positron in general has more auto-exec features than VSCode. such are running any code in a .Rprofile file in the folder, which can include arbitrary shell commands.