Support for Customizing Preference Name

[israhadhri]

Hello, Eclipse Theia Team,

I have encountered a challenge related to customizing preference names and their placement.

In my project, I want to customize the names of some default preferences.
For example, I updated the preference schema to rename workbench.colorTheme to Theme
( I want the theme to be directly under appearance without workbench).

I modified the Schema Provider and Layout Provider, and the custom names are successfully displayed in the UI.

However, the underlying functionality is broken because the logic still references the original preference name (workbench.colorTheme).

Question

Is there a way to create a mapping for preference names in Theia? If so, how can this be implemented to preserve both the custom display names in the UI and the original functionality?

Thank you for your assistance!

[msujew]

Hey @israhadhri,

I don't think we have a direct builtin way of customizing preference names (although that would be pretty nice, as that would also allow localization of preferences, PRs are welcome). Currently, the names are generated in here:

theia/packages/preferences/src/browser/util/preference-tree-label-provider.ts

Lines 32 to 40 in 1869bc5

	getName(node: Preference.TreeNode): string {
	if (Preference.TreeNode.is(node) && node.label) {
	return node.label;
	}
	const { id } = Preference.TreeNode.getGroupAndIdFromNodeId(node.id);
	const labels = id.split('.');
	const groupName = labels[labels.length - 1];
	return this.formatString(groupName);
	}

You might either find a way to place a label in the tree nodes or adjust the label provider itself to generate a different name.

[israhadhri]

Hi @msujew ,
Thank you for your suggestion, it was helpful