How to prevent 'Create Definition' opening a new tab?

[Shaun Hamman (Drakmyth)]

While writing C++ code, I frequently have the *.cpp and associated *.h file open side by side, as shown below:

If I add a method definition to my *.h file and choose the Quick Fix option to "Create definition in *.cpp file", instead of moving focus over to the already open instance of the *.cpp file, it opens a new tab in the same window group as the *.h file:

Looking through the extension settings, I don't see any option for changing this behavior. Am I just missing it, or does it not exist? I am using v1.26.3 of the extension.

[Colen Garoutte-Carson (Colengms)]

Hi Shaun Hamman (@Drakmyth) . I believe we could fix this in the C/C++ Extension, by first searching for an existing editor to activate. However, what you're seeing appears to be the due to 'default' behavior of the window.showTextDocument VS Code API, when called with no/default 'options'. If we were to do something special here, that could result in inconsistent behavior compared to other features and/or extensions. Since I don't see how the existing behavior is in any way better than the behavior you are expecting, would you be willing to open an issue in the VS Code repo, to see if window.showTextDocument could instead be improved to handle this simple scenario better?

[Shaun Hamman (Drakmyth)]

I have opened microsoft/vscode#263012 as requested

[Shaun Hamman (Drakmyth)]

They recommended turning on the workbench.editor.revealIfOpen which does seem to make it favor already open windows over making new ones! Thanks for the help!