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Build M5 I went to the Team->CVS->Decorators preferences page and enabled the decorators that I wanted to see. But no matter what combination of decorators I chose, I couldn't make anything appear. Eventually I discovered that I have to also enable CVS decorators from the Workbench->Label Decorators page. There should be some way to enable decorators from the Team->CVS->Decorators page, as well. Or at least there should be some indication that decorators are disabled.
Decorator enablement is the responsibility of the workbench UI. You're not the only one who thinks that the Label Decorators preference page is a bad place for this. :-) I think the right solution is for the UI team to make decorator enablement a much more visible action. I don't think it's really a preference; people have legitimate reasons for wanting to turn them on and off in various contexts. I think of preferences more as a global set-once-and-forget thing.
...and as an implementation note, all of the API for managing decorators is internal to the workbench; we cannot use any of it. (Meaning we can't turn our decorator on programatically).
Moving to UI. Nick, I couldn't find another PR that asked to make decorator enablement easier to do, so I guess you can consider this to be one.
We decided not to change the preference page location, or add duplicate menu items / toolbar items. We don't have a good story other than preference pages for things that users consider "modes of operation". This is an area to address post 2-0. (In my view it's also arguable whether decorators are a mode of operation rather than a preference - I treat them as a preference and always leave them on). However, there is API now on IDecoratorManager for enabling/disabling decorators if plugins or VCM providers want to do this themselves for a particular decorator.
For the particular issue raised here, you can either add a check box to the CVS decorator prefs page and use the new API mentioned above, or add a label pointing the user at the Label Decorations page.
Thanks Nick. I think I'd prefer not to add our own enablement checkbox, since I think its confusing to be able to do the same thing from two different places. Unless this is a style that we encourage other decorator writers to use in their preferences. Unless of course the Apply or OK in the CVS Preferences page automatically did the enablement - I guess that would make sense to the user?
I wouldn't turn the CVS decorator on for free without at least warning the user and giving them the chance to cancel. In the future it would be better to have a single page for decorations, with Advanced... or something similar for configuring them in more detail.
Reopen for investigation
There is consideration of making a special decorators preference object that would link into the current decorators. Marking as enhancement.
There are currently no plans to work on this feature
