PositroNB: Restart kernel button #9898

seeM · 2025-10-10T17:03:54Z

Add the Restart Kernel button to Positron notebooks, addresses #9789.

Screen.Recording.2025-10-10.at.19.02.37.mov

Release Notes

New Features

N/A

Bug Fixes

N/A

QA Notes

@:notebooks

github-actions · 2025-10-10T17:04:13Z

E2E Tests 🚀
This PR will run tests tagged with: @:critical @:notebooks

^readme ^{valid tags}

rodrigosf672 · 2025-10-10T19:00:25Z

@seeM Based on your changes, what do you expect to happen in the scenarios 2-4?

Cases

User attempts to restart the kernel of a saved notebook while nothing is running (most trivial).
User attempts to restart the kernel of an unsaved notebook while nothing is running (trivial);
User attempts to restart the kernel of a saved notebook while something is running (complex);
User attempts to restart the kernel of an unsaved notebook while something is running (most complex).

Outcomes

Kernel restarts with no additional prompts/dialogs.
?
?
?

cindyytong · 2025-10-14T14:51:37Z

@seeM Awesome!

This is looking good however I am concerned that we are running out of space in the nav bar and not grouping related actions in the same area. I put 2 mockups for exploration here to determine next steps: https://www.figma.com/design/z9EOP4qLLzR08PNxe4M0Ei/Positron-Notebooks---Design-Audit?node-id=305-2&t=8CHFBPPjEQfYYkiB-1

nstrayer

Code itself looks great. I'll leave the design part to further discussions.

src/vs/workbench/contrib/runtimeNotebookKernel/browser/runtimeNotebookKernelActions.ts

seeM · 2025-10-16T14:32:28Z

Thanks for the reviews! I've updated the UI based on your feedback:

Run All and Clear Outputs no longer show titles – they have tooltips to clarify any confusion
"+ Code" and "+ Markdown" moved to the left
Restart Kernel moved to the right and no title (to be moved into a submenu in Positron Notebooks: Enhanced kernel info in the notebook toolbar #9722)
Show Console moved to the More Actions submenu

cindyytong · 2025-10-16T15:12:43Z

@seeM looking great! Based on the design we made the other day with a new dropdown for the kernel, are you suggesting that whole dropdown gets handled in #9722

Where restart kernel and show console would be a submenu item in this dropdown?

My understanding was that 9722 would just capture putting the kernel info in the new dropdown

midleman

I don't see any particular e2e tests that exercise the notebook kernel restart. I can def add a test for that. However, I was curious if there are any particular checks I should assert? Is there any kind of persistence that is expected or is everything wiped?

seeM · 2025-10-17T09:01:03Z

@midleman in terms of state, it should behave exactly as restarting a console session. Some ideas:

The button is disabled while the session is starting, and while shutting down after clicking
Can execute a cell afterwards, execution order is reset and all state was wiped

seeM · 2025-10-17T09:04:58Z

@rodrigosf672 IIUC whether the notebook is saved or not shouldn't affect restart behavior.

Perhaps restarting while something is running should display a warning, and perhaps a warning should also be displayed based if data will be lost. Will start a discussion in Slack.

midleman · 2025-10-20T15:13:08Z

FYI, added a ticket to create an e2e test for this feature: #10033

nstrayer

Re-reviewed and all looks good to me! I like the new design!

nstrayer · 2025-10-20T20:12:20Z

src/vs/workbench/contrib/positronNotebook/browser/KernelStatusBadge.css

-		color: grey;
-	}
+	/* Use this property to take padding into account when sizing (prevents overflow) */
+	box-sizing: border-box;


Crazy this isn't in a base css file reset.

dhruvisompura

Thanks for all this work!

I marked as Request changes because of the runtime status icon bug which does effect the console session list too. The fix is a small one line change which I dropped as a code suggestion. Mostly looking great. Had a couple comments/questions but nothing majorly blocking once that status icon color bug is fixed!

dhruvisompura · 2025-10-20T20:09:02Z

src/vs/workbench/contrib/positronConsole/browser/components/runtimeStatus.tsx

+const statusToIconColor: Record<RuntimeStatus, ColorIdentifier> = {
+	[RuntimeStatus.Active]: POSITRON_CONSOLE_STATE_ICON_ACTIVE,
+	[RuntimeStatus.Disconnected]: POSITRON_CONSOLE_STATE_ICON_DISCONNECTED,
+	[RuntimeStatus.Idle]: POSITRON_CONSOLE_STATE_ICON_DISCONNECTED,


Looks like a small copy/paste error that is causing the icon to always be red for the notebook kernel status AND in the console tab list. Changing this to use the right css variable should fix that issue :)

Suggested change

[RuntimeStatus.Idle]: POSITRON_CONSOLE_STATE_ICON_DISCONNECTED,

[RuntimeStatus.Idle]: POSITRON_CONSOLE_STATE_ICON_IDLE,

dhruvisompura · 2025-10-20T20:10:16Z

src/vs/workbench/contrib/positronConsole/browser/components/consoleInstanceState.tsx

-			className={`codicon ${icon}`}
-			style={{ color }}
-		/>
+		<RuntimeStatusIcon status={runtimeStatus} />


Thanks for doing the work to make the runtime and runtime status icons into reusable components. This is so much nicer!

dhruvisompura · 2025-10-20T20:12:44Z

src/vs/workbench/contrib/positronConsole/browser/components/runtimeStatus.tsx

+export const RuntimeStatusIcon = ({ status }: RuntimeStatusIconProps) => {
+	const iconClass = statusToIconClass[status];
+	const iconColor = statusToIconColor[status];
+	const iconColorCss = asCssVariable(iconColor);


I didn't know about these handy helpers! This makes it so much easier to keep the css maintainable and find all the different uses of a theme color!

dhruvisompura · 2025-10-20T20:37:04Z

src/vs/workbench/contrib/positronNotebook/browser/KernelStatusBadge.tsx

+				{/* TODO: Runtime name or session name? */}
+				<p className='session-name'>{runtimeName}</p>


If the todo is in regards to what to display here (and not about renaming the css class), then I think runtime name makes a lot of sense!

The runtimeName field should really be used to reflect the runtime and the sessionName is used for arbitrary labels (and can change). For this use case, I think the user cares about the specific runtime. Another thing to note, but it looks like the session name for notebooks defaults to the name of the file which isn't really useful in the kernel status badge anyways.

We may want to rethink this if we decide to enable console.showNotebookConsoles and fully flesh it out as a feature. In the console, we show the session name and not the runtime name (which makes sense there). We would probably want to think about how we can communicate that this kernel status badge is reflecting the same/similar information as the console pane.

dhruvisompura · 2025-10-20T20:52:10Z

src/vs/workbench/contrib/positronNotebook/browser/KernelStatusBadge.css

+	/* TODO: Use margin? */
+	gap: 4px;


Using gap here makes sense over margin if the intention is to add equal spacing to the children elements of positron-notebook-kernel-status-badge which I think is what you are trying to do.

If you were to replace this with margin, you'd need to add that CSS to the RuntimeStatusIcon CSS file but I wouldn't recommend that because then we'd need to override the margin if used in other places that needs different gutter spacing.

I would probably change this to use column-gap here as well to be extra specific about the spacing you are targeting:

Suggested change

/* TODO: Use margin? */

gap: 4px;

column-gap: 4px;

dhruvisompura · 2025-10-20T20:59:31Z

src/vs/workbench/contrib/positronNotebook/browser/positronNotebook.contribution.ts

-		order: 30,
-		title: { value: localize('showConsole', 'Show Console'), original: 'Show Console' },
+		id: MenuId.PositronNotebookKernelSubmenu,
+		// group: 'kernel',


Can we just remove this line instead of commenting it out, or do we need it for some future work?

dhruvisompura · 2025-10-20T21:02:33Z

src/vs/workbench/contrib/positronNotebook/browser/SelectPositronNotebookKernelAction.ts

 			category: NOTEBOOK_ACTIONS_CATEGORY_POSITRON,
-			title: localize2('positronNotebookActions.selectKernel', 'Select Positron Notebook Kernel'),
-			icon: selectKernelIcon,
+			title: localize2('positronNotebookActions.selectKernel', 'Change Kernel...'),


Super minor nit, but I think renaming the localized string key here makes sense - not a blocker though!

Suggested change

title: localize2('positronNotebookActions.selectKernel', 'Change Kernel...'),

title: localize2('positronNotebookActions.changeKernel', 'Change Kernel...'),

dhruvisompura · 2025-10-20T21:15:31Z

src/vs/workbench/services/runtimeSession/common/runtimeSession.ts

 				localize('positron.notebook.workingDirectoryChanged.title', 'Update working directory?'),
 				localize(
 					'positron.notebook.workingDirectoryChanged',
+					// eslint-disable-next-line local/code-no-unexternalized-strings


Thanks for adding that. I was wondering about this error and if it was something we could ignore or if we needed to change this string.

seeM requested review from cindyytong, dhruvisompura, midleman, nstrayer and rodrigosf672 October 10, 2025 17:03

nstrayer previously approved these changes Oct 14, 2025

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dhruvisompura reviewed Oct 15, 2025

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src/vs/workbench/contrib/runtimeNotebookKernel/browser/runtimeNotebookKernelActions.ts Outdated Show resolved Hide resolved

seeM dismissed nstrayer’s stale review via 8b66d2d October 16, 2025 14:29

seeM force-pushed the fix/positron-nb-restart-kernel branch from ca6b680 to 8b66d2d Compare October 16, 2025 14:29

midleman previously approved these changes Oct 16, 2025

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seeM mentioned this pull request Oct 17, 2025

Positron Notebooks UI sprint #9998

Open

seeM dismissed midleman’s stale review via 202ebc4 October 20, 2025 18:49

seeM force-pushed the fix/positron-nb-restart-kernel branch from 8b66d2d to 202ebc4 Compare October 20, 2025 18:49

seeM added 9 commits October 20, 2025 20:49

add restart kernel button to positron notebooks

944a5df

ui changes as discussed

dd6252b

check if uri instead

b062d75

extract runtime status icon component

1c4d41c

avoid initial run

51f1eda

wip checkpoint

041d4fe

wip: try custom modal

d74a1d3

helper notebook session type

ba864f3

refactor restart action, preparing for shutdown action

a1f291f

seeM added 5 commits October 20, 2025 20:49

add shutdown action

0ba4f94

fix args for runtime notebook kernel commands

a516e40

fix runtime kernel actions; add restart keybinding

2056af4

cleaning up

7a33a18

fix actions from kernel menu

fbd23f2

seeM force-pushed the fix/positron-nb-restart-kernel branch from 202ebc4 to fbd23f2 Compare October 20, 2025 18:50

nstrayer self-requested a review October 20, 2025 20:14

nstrayer reviewed Oct 20, 2025

View reviewed changes

dhruvisompura requested changes Oct 20, 2025

View reviewed changes

	[RuntimeStatus.Idle]: POSITRON_CONSOLE_STATE_ICON_DISCONNECTED,
	[RuntimeStatus.Idle]: POSITRON_CONSOLE_STATE_ICON_IDLE,

		{/* TODO: Runtime name or session name? */}
		<p className='session-name'>{runtimeName}</p>

	title: localize2('positronNotebookActions.selectKernel', 'Change Kernel...'),
	title: localize2('positronNotebookActions.changeKernel', 'Change Kernel...'),

PositroNB: Restart kernel button #9898

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PositroNB: Restart kernel button #9898

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seeM commented Oct 10, 2025

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rodrigosf672 commented Oct 10, 2025

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