Add sort dropdown to packages pane by bricestacey · Pull Request #13060 · posit-dev/positron

bricestacey · 2026-04-16T17:44:23Z

Add an action bar with a sort action item that allows sorting packages by name and name (a-z). The selected sort order is shown in the label.

As a PositronDynamicActiomBar, we also include an overflow menu item the has the same options under a "Sort" submenu.

Demo:

Overflow behavior, note that sort is a submenu now:

Future work:

The intention is to expand the sort options using additional metadata when available, but we don't have it at this time.
Integrate the current sort control with the input text itself, like the extensions pane does, e.g. with @sort:installs

Release Notes

New Features

Add sort action item to the Packages pane

Bug Fixes

N/A

QA Notes

The default sort should be alphabetical.
I added reverse alphabetical order, mostly for the sake of demonstration, until we can augment the underlying data with more metadata.

@:packages-pane

Add a PositronDynamicActionBar with a sort menu that allows sorting packages by name (A-Z or Z-A). The sort order is applied after filtering. See #12924

When the packages pane is too narrow to display the sort dropdown, it now appears as a "Sort" submenu in the overflow menu. See #12924

github-actions · 2026-04-16T17:44:44Z

E2E Tests 🚀
This PR will run tests tagged with: @:critical @:packages-pane

^readme ^{valid tags}

cindyytong · 2026-04-16T20:31:51Z

@bricestacey This looks good for MVP
Can you check if you add in a filter and then you sort, does this sort the filtered results?

Non blocking comments

Are we planning to have more sort options in the future? i.e. sort by stars, recent updated, other available metadata
If yes then I think the dropdown makes sense. If no then do we really need a dropdown for sorting by title? Can it instead be a button, this would require a column name

We have a different label for sorting in the data explorer.

Thoughts on pulling sort up to the same line as filter like in the data explorer

cindyytong · 2026-04-16T20:36:34Z

One more design for inspiration
I like how for extensions we have the filter icon with sort by options

softwarenerd

Ascending renders as "Sort: Name" but descending as "Sort: Name (Z-A)"

softwarenerd · 2026-04-17T17:53:24Z

+	const sortActions = (): IAction[] => {
+		return [
+			{
+				id: 'sortNameAsc',


Perhaps positronPackages.sortNameAsc.

I believe these require an id for the sake of conforming to the IAction interface, which we reuse for the Positron action bars. Otherwise, we will never reference these action and they're never registered in anything where an id matters.

It could be a random UUID, correct? If so, if anything I would replace it with generateUuid() to remove the ambiguity of the ability for reuse or their stable nature, but I think it's fine as-is to use a unique string.

Do you have an opinion?

If I am correct, I think we probably shouldn't require the PositronActionBar to conform strictly to the IAction. Instead, we should use Pick<IAction, 'foo', 'bar'> & { id?: string } to make the id optional... and randomly generate it when not provided if we even need it.

A parallel path might be to define IActions independent of the implementation and pull them in from an export versus inline. Then, id perhaps would be meaningful.

softwarenerd · 2026-04-17T17:53:42Z

+				run: () => setSortOrder(PackagesSortOrder.NameAsc)
+			},
+			{
+				id: 'sortNameDesc',


Perhaps positronPackages.sortNameDesc.

Resolve merge conflicts in listPackages.tsx: - Incorporate new ActionBarFilter props (showClearAlways, clearButtonIcon, size) - Add handleFilterTextChanged to clear selection on filter change - Add empty state message when no packages match filter - Keep sort dropdown and action bar structure

bricestacey · 2026-04-21T16:20:29Z

Are we planning to have more sort options in the future? i.e. sort by stars, recent updated, other available metadata
If yes then I think the dropdown makes sense. If no then do we really need a dropdown for sorting by title? Can it instead be a button, this would require a column name

We'll be adding more, but this the absolute minimal MVP to get the feature going. Once we have started to sync metadata from a 3rd party API (e.g. #12928), we can layer in additional sorts.

We have a different label for sorting in the data explorer.

Maybe I should match the data explorer and make a note to review.

Thoughts on pulling sort up to the same line as filter like in the data explorer
One more design for inspiration
I like how for extensions we have the filter icon with sort by options

Agreed, I think the Extensions sidebar is a good example to imitate.

This current implementation that has the sort (and in #13112 it also includes the category filter) on a separate row with no other controls to justify the additional actionbar seems superfluous.

bricestacey · 2026-04-21T16:22:20Z

Ascending renders as "Sort: Name" but descending as "Sort: Name (Z-A)"

This was intentional because "Name (A-Z)" seems excessive. The label "Name" is sorted alphabetically and alphabetically sorted lists are naturally sorted A-Z so "Name" is sufficient.

Replace the separate sort action bar with a filter icon button inside ActionBarFilter, which opens a context menu with a "Sort" submenu. The clear button now also resets the sort to the default (Name A-Z), matching the user expectation that "clear all" resets every filter. See #12924

Make the filter input the single source of truth for sort state. The input is parsed into free-text and an `@sort:<value>` token; selecting a sort option from the filter menu rewrites the input via the ActionBarFilter handle, which flows back through the normal input path. Parser leaves unknown `@...` tokens in place so future tokens (e.g. `@outdated`) display harmlessly until they're recognized. Drop the now-unused onClearButtonPressed hook — clearing the input resets sort through the same derivation. See #12924

Move parseQuery / applySortToQuery out of listPackages.tsx into a sibling packagesQuery.ts module so the grammar can be tested without pulling in React. Add unit tests covering sort tokens, case-insensitivity, multiple tokens, whitespace normalization, unknown-token pass-through, and a round-trip from applySortToQuery into parseQuery. See #12924

@sort

Previously parseQuery only consumed recognized @sort:<known-value> tokens; anything else (including @sort:bogus, @outdated, @author:hadley) fell through into free-text filtering, which matches no package names and leaves the user with an empty list until they hand-edit the token back out. Consume every @key[:value] shape the regex matches, even when the key or value is unrecognized. This future-proofs tokens like @outdated that are planned but not yet wired up, and keeps unknown input from silently poisoning the free-text filter. See #12924

Hoist the filter input text (the single source of truth for both free-text filter and sort) out of ListPackages' local React state and onto the instance, so switching panes, tabs, or runtime sessions no longer resets the user's filter and sort choice. On active-instance change the stored query is pushed into the filter input and debounced state synchronously so filtering doesn't flash stale results for 300ms after the switch. See #12924

This reverts commit f84375a.

bricestacey · 2026-04-22T20:43:08Z

softwarenerd

Sorry if I'm beating a dead horse, but generally, a drop down menu should display the selected value consistently:

Another issue I see is that if I click on an entry and start pressing up arrow and down arrow, the entry that is selected does not change and the entire list scrolls by some seemingly unrelated amount of pixels:

Screen.Recording.2026-04-22.at.3.50.37.PM.mov

Also, if I click twice on an entry, it gets a colored background, but pressing up arrow and down arrow doesn't do anything in this state:

Screen.Recording.2026-04-22.at.3.53.44.PM.mov

Perhaps these things are out of scope for this PR at this time. I'm mentioning them because Variables, also based on react-window, handles some of this (imperfectly) in keyDownHandler in src/vs/workbench/contrib/positronVariables/browser/components/variablesInstance.tsx.

bricestacey · 2026-04-23T14:13:52Z

I think you need to pull the latest @softwarenerd

softwarenerd

LG!

bricestacey added 2 commits April 16, 2026 13:26

Add sort dropdown to packages pane

e4335b8

Add a PositronDynamicActionBar with a sort menu that allows sorting packages by name (A-Z or Z-A). The sort order is applied after filtering. See #12924

Add overflow menu support for packages sort dropdown

140219a

When the packages pane is too narrow to display the sort dropdown, it now appears as a "Sort" submenu in the overflow menu. See #12924

bricestacey requested review from jlang-311 and softwarenerd April 16, 2026 17:44

softwarenerd previously approved these changes Apr 17, 2026

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bricestacey dismissed softwarenerd’s stale review via 2105d3f April 21, 2026 13:37

bricestacey added 6 commits April 21, 2026 16:44

Revert "Persist packages filter query on PositronPackagesInstance"

591dfe0

This reverts commit f84375a.

softwarenerd self-requested a review April 22, 2026 22:42

softwarenerd reviewed Apr 22, 2026

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softwarenerd approved these changes Apr 23, 2026

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bricestacey merged commit e1ed799 into main Apr 23, 2026
19 checks passed

bricestacey deleted the 12924/packages-sort-action-bar branch April 23, 2026 17:18

github-actions Bot locked and limited conversation to collaborators Apr 23, 2026

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bricestacey commented Apr 16, 2026

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