Add an eyecatcher to identify p4 commands issued by the plug-in

[cpmclouth]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
The plugin uses the p4 binary that it finds in the path to issue commands. The server log will record the client as the specific p4 version.

For example:

2025/06/02 14:56:53 pid 208024 joecoder@jc-vscode-plugin-test XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX [p4/2024.1/MACOSX12ARM64/2596294] 'user-info'

This can make it difficult for Perforce Admins to identify commands that are being issued by the plug-in.

Describe the solution you'd like

An undocumented means can be added to a p4 command to provide a program name. For example:
p4 -z 'prog=Perforce for VS Code/4.16.1' info will produce a server log that looks like this:

2025/06/02 15:03:37 pid 209382 joecoder@jc-vscode-plugin-test XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX [Perforce for VS Code/4.16.1/2024.1/MACOSX12ARM64/2596294] 'user-info'

This makes it obvious to a Perforce Admin that the command is coming from the plugin.

Describe alternatives you've considered
The fix would seem to be simple, but I wasn't able to figure out how to get the package name and version at runtime so as to supply to the p4 command.

I'm willing to code the solution, if you can give me some breadcrumbs to capture the plugin package name and version at runtime.

Additional context

[mjcrouch]

Hi - thanks for raising - it's something I've wanted to do for a while - yes it should be pretty straightforward. I was considering adding the option to customize or turn it off within the vscode settings in case of any issues with compatibility that I'm not aware of (but maybe that's not a concern).

The fix would seem to be simple, but I wasn't able to figure out how to get the package name and version at runtime so as to supply to the p4 command.

This is in the package.json which you can read at runtime. However, our minimum VS code version is currently 1.53, and in this version, in order to get the package JSON you need to know the name of the package!

But if we update the minimum VS Code version to 1.55.0 you can get the package JSON without knowing the name in advance.

i.e.

• update @types/vscode to 1.55.0

npm i --dev-only @types/vscode@1.55.0

• set minimum engine version in package json to ^1.55.0

 "engines": {
    "vscode": "^1.55.0"
 },

now in the extension.ts file we have the activate function which accepts a vscode.ExtensionContext. Within that we can read the extension and get its packageJSON, i.e. something like this

const displayName = ctx.extension.packageJSON.displayName
const version = ctx.extension.packageJSON.version