Allow disabling of interpreter auto-selection

[AutomateAaron]

Environment data

• VS Code version: 1.55.2
• Extension version (available under the Extensions sidebar): v2021.3.680753044
• OS and version: Windows 10, using WSL 2
• Python version (& distribution if applicable, e.g. Anaconda): 3.9 (but should be irrelevant to this issue)
• Type of virtual environment used (N/A | venv | virtualenv | conda | ...): conda
• Relevant/affected Python packages and their versions: N/A
• Relevant/affected Python-related VS Code extensions and their versions: N/A
• Value of the python.languageServer setting: Not Set

[NOTE: If you suspect that your issue is related to the Microsoft Python Language Server (python.languageServer: 'Microsoft'), please download our new language server Pylance from the VS Code marketplace to see if that fixes your issue]

Background

Nowhere in my vscode settings (user, remote, or workspace) do I define a python.pythonPath (nor python.defaultInterpreterPath), the setting is completely empty:

Expected behaviour

Newly created projects should have no interpreter & vscode should show Select Python Interpreter on the statusbar

Actual behaviour

Newly created projects select my conda project auth0-python-web-app (an environment from a unrelated project).

Steps to reproduce:

[NOTE: Self-contained, minimal reproducing code samples are extremely helpful and will expedite addressing your issue]

This is for me to reproduce

1. Create a new directory
2. File > Open Folder... > Select newly created folder
3. Create a *.py
4. VSCode selects my auth0-python-web-app environment

Other notes

• Restarting VS code doesn't resolve this
• If I delete the selected conda environment (in this case auth0-python-web-app), vscode will start autoselecting a different conda environment. I can't figure out how it determines which one it selects.

[kimadeline]

Hi Aaron N. Brock ☂️ (@AaronNBrock),

The environment auto-selection proceeds as follows:

• Select the environment with the latest Python version, and
• Pick the first one in alphabetical order.

If you want to get the "Select Python Environment" prompt on the status bar, you can set python.defaultInterpreterPath to a bogus value, for example " ".

[AutomateAaron]

Hey Kim-Adeline Miguel (@kimadeline),

I updating the the setting:

{
    "python.defaultInterpreterPath": " "
}  

However it's still automatically selecting a the other environment.

Also, is the functionality you describe here documented anywhere?

Thanks~

[kimadeline]

Hi Aaron N. Brock ☂️ (@AaronNBrock), thank you for your patience!

This setting only works if you're in the DeprecatePythonPath experiment. Try adding this to your global settings.json:

"python.experiments.optInto": [
        "DeprecatePythonPath - experiment"
    ],

It is documented in the wiki.

However since your ask is to find a way to disable interpreter auto-selection, I am going to switch this to a feature request and mark this issue as "needs decision" to make sure we have a conversation about your idea. We plan to leave this feature request open for at least a month to see how many 👍 votes your idea gets to help us make our decision, so feel free to upvote the initial post to help us prioritize it.