Include column numbers in location URLs

[Marcono1234]

Include column numbers in the GitHub location URLs, in the format LstartlineCstartcolumnLendlineCendcolumn.

Warning: It looks like this is not fully supported by the GitHub web interface, neither for the old code view nor the new code view, see https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/48301#discussioncomment-5831155. Might be good to clarify this with your colleagues.
No worries if you decide to reject this pull request.

Also, I am not very familiar with this project yet, so please let me know if overlooked something or if there is something else I should change. Any feedback is appreciated!

Checklist

• CHANGELOG.md has been updated to incorporate all user visible changes made by this pull request.
• Issues have been created for any UI or other user-facing changes made by this pull request.
• [Maintainers only] If this pull request makes user-facing changes that require documentation changes, open a corresponding docs pull request in the github/codeql repo and add the ready-for-doc-review label there.

[aeisenberg]

Can you add a link to the discussion where you mention this? In the future, this may be fixed and adding a link here would allow us to follow up as things change.

[aeisenberg]

Also, what happens if you pass an end column number that is smaller than the start? Or what if you pass startColumn === endColumn && startLine === endLine?

This can be a user error if they define a bad source location in the query. It's probably harmless, and if so there's no need to handle or check for this. But, just would like to make sure.

[Marcono1234]

Also, what happens if you pass an end column number that is smaller than the start? Or what if you pass startColumn === endColumn && startLine === endLine?

Good points! The old code view behaves like this:

• startColumn === endColumn: No highlighting
• startColumn > endColumn: Highlighting

[Marcono1234]

Got a response on the discussion that this will be improved in the future.

Though maybe for now there is no point in including this in the extension yet if the old code view only supports some scenarios properly and the new code view ignores column information completely. I will therefore mark this pull request as Draft for now, I hope that is alright for you. Thank you nonetheless for your review already!

[Marcono1234]

As small update: It looks like the new GitHub code view now highlights the sections correctly. However, because the new code view isn't the default yet and the old code view still does not support all cases this pull request will still have to wait.

[Marcono1234]

Have rebased this pull request onto the latest changes of main and also added checks to only include the column information in the URL if it is valid (i.e. either start-line < end-line or if on the same line start-column < end-column), as suggested by you.

The new code view is now also shown for anonymous users (see changelog entry). Therefore I have now marked this PR as ready.

However, there are still the following open issues:

• If "Wrap lines" is enabled in the code view, the highlighted section might be wrong
• If the highlighted section is too far on the right, the code view does not automatically scroll there, so the section might not be immediately visible

See https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/48301#discussioncomment-6456645

[robertbrignull]

Thanks for tracking the deployment of the new code view and any bug fixes there. I think it makes sense to use this new feature now, but thanks for also highlighting a couple of edge cases where it's not perfect.

The extension changes look good to me. I've also tried running a variant analysis and the link generation all works correctly for me.

[Marcono1234]

Thanks! Should I edit CHANGELOG.md as well, or is this not considered 'user visible'?

Or of course feel free to edit the changelog yourself in case that is easier for you.

[robertbrignull]

Good point. A changelog entry would be good for this since this would be considered a user-visible change.

I'll add a changelog entry and merge this PR 🚀