List every comment in your workspace — in any supported language — and jump straight to it in one click.
What It Does
- Scans your workspace and finds every line and block comment, across 25+ languages (see Supported Languages below).
- Groups results by folder → file → comment in a dedicated Comments view in the Activity Bar.
- Clicking a comment opens its file and jumps straight to that line.
- Respects configurable include/exclude globs and a max file size limit, so scans stay fast on large repos.
Quick Start
- Open any folder/project in VS Code.
- Open the Command Palette (
Cmd+Shift+P / Ctrl+Shift+P) and run Comment List Manager: Scan Workspace.
- A notification shows how many comments were found, and the Comments view opens automatically (Activity Bar icon on the left, or find it under the Explorer's view list).
- The results are grouped as folder → file → comment. Click any comment to jump to that exact line.
- Made changes to your code? Run
Comment List Manager: Refresh Comments (or click "Refresh" in the empty-state view) to rescan.
If nothing shows up, the scan found zero comments matching your current settings — see Settings below to widen the scan.
Commands
| Command |
What it does |
Comment List Manager: Scan Workspace |
Scans the workspace and populates the Comments view. |
Comment List Manager: Refresh Comments |
Clears the current list and rescans from scratch. |
Comment List Manager: Open Comment |
Opens a specific comment's file at its line (invoked by clicking a tree item, not meant to be run directly). |
Settings
Configure these under Settings → Extensions → Comment List Manager, or directly in settings.json:
| Setting |
Type |
Default |
Description |
commentListManager.includeGlobs |
string[] |
common source file extensions |
Glob patterns to include when scanning. |
commentListManager.excludeGlobs |
string[] |
node_modules, .git, dist, build, out, etc. |
Glob patterns to exclude when scanning. |
commentListManager.maxFileSizeKb |
number |
1024 |
Files larger than this (in KB) are skipped entirely. |
Supported Languages
TypeScript/JavaScript, Python, Java, C#, C/C++, Go, Ruby, Rust, PHP, Shell/Bash, PowerShell, Swift, Kotlin, Objective-C, Scala, Lua, Perl, Erlang, Elixir, Haskell, Clojure, SQL, Markdown, YAML, JSON (JSONC-style // and /* */), HTML, and CSS/SCSS/Less.
Each language has its own line/block comment markers defined in src/commentScanner.ts — see Tips below for how to add more.
How It Works
The scanner reads each matched file and walks its text in a single pass, tracking whether it's currently inside a string literal (', ", `, with escape-character handling). This means comment markers that merely appear inside a string — e.g. a variable holding "/* not a comment */" — are correctly ignored instead of being misdetected as real comments.
Known limitation: this is still a lightweight, generic scanner, not a full per-language parser. Edge cases like regex literals (/foo/) or unusual raw-string syntax in some languages could in theory still produce a false positive. In practice this is rare.
Development
npm install # install dependencies
npm run watch # compile TypeScript in watch mode
npm run compile # one-off compile (also runs automatically before packaging)
npm run lint # run ESLint over src/
npm run package # build a local .vsix (see Packaging below)
Press F5 in VS Code to launch an Extension Development Host with the extension loaded. It automatically opens the demo-samples/ folder — a small set of JS/TS/Java/Python files with sample comments (including tricky cases like markers inside strings) — so you can immediately run Scan Workspace and see results without hunting for a test project.
Project layout:
src/extension.ts — activation, command registration, scan orchestration.src/commentScanner.ts — language definitions and the comment-extraction scanner.src/commentTreeProvider.ts — builds and renders the folder/file/comment tree view.src/models.ts — shared TypeScript types.demo-samples/ — sample files for manual testing (excluded from the packaged extension).
Packaging & Publishing (VS Marketplace)
Build a local .vsix to test before publishing:
npm run package
This produces comment-list-manager-<version>.vsix in the project root. Install it locally with:
code --install-extension comment-list-manager-<version>.vsix
(Reload the VS Code window afterwards if you're updating an already-installed version.)
Publish to the Marketplace:
- Bump
version in package.json (or use vsce publish patch|minor|major, which bumps and publishes in one step).
- If you haven't already, create a Personal Access Token at dev.azure.com (User Settings → Personal Access Tokens), scoped to Marketplace (Manage) for All accessible organizations.
- Log in once:
npx vsce login <publisher> (uses the token above).
- Publish:
npx vsce publish
Tips
- On very large repositories, tighten
includeGlobs or lower maxFileSizeKb to keep scans fast.
- Add support for another language by extending the
languageDefinitions array in src/commentScanner.ts with its file extensions and line/block comment markers.
