Connections Pane: Inspecting connections inside called functions and globally scoped code

[gregorywaynepower]

Hey Positron Devs, I really enjoy the idea of the connection panel to explore my database tables in my IDE!

One thing I've noticed is that I cannot inspect connections or variables inside functions:

import sqlite3

def connection_inside_function():

    conn = sqlite3.connect("please_delete.sqlite")

    conn

connection_inside_function()

However, I can inspect the connection when it is defined globally:

import sqlite3

conn = sqlite3.connect("please_delete.sqlite")

conn

Is the recommended workflow Positron putting globally scoped code through IPython sessions? I see this workflow from my R colleagues.

My current build:

Positron Version: 2025.08.0 build 130
Code - OSS Version: 1.102.0
Commit: 76ddce5
Date: 2025-08-01T20:12:54.670Z
Electron: 35.6.0
Chromium: 134.0.6998.205
Node.js: 22.15.1
V8: 13.4.114.21-electron.0
OS: Linux x64 6.12.10-76061203-generic

Edit:

Not sure if this is a repeat of #8546 and is something that would be covered in #8939.

[juliasilge]

Thank you for this question!

Can you say more about what you mean by this:

inspect connections or variables inside functions

Do you mean debugging a connections object using the Python debugger? Or something more like the UI support provided by the Connections pane? Or maybe something else 😅

[gregorywaynepower]

Thanks for the reply! Yes, I'm referring to the UI in the Connections pane.

[juliasilge]

I think you just need to explicitly return it, so the object has the right connection class and the UI knows what to do with it:

IIUC a Python function without an explicit return will return None.

[gregorywaynepower]

Thank you @juliasilge!