Visual Studio Code - Students can't see Python interpreters

[JBlue46]

Our IT teachers are wanting to move over to using Visual Studio Code for Computing lessons but I'm having major trouble with student user accounts being unable to see any Python interpreters. To clarify, I'm using all user installs of both Visual Studio Code and Python 3.11.5 so they're sat in C:\Program Files and ticked the 'PATH' options during install. They're able to install the required Python extension within Visual Studio Code though (I believe this gets put in their local user profile on the machine).

 

Accounts with elevated privileges don't seem to have any issue automatically picking up the location of the interpreter so possibly a permissions issue? Any help much appreciated!

[Bankesy]

@JBlue46

 

I had a very similar query to this from our Head of Computing this week, something about how she could use Python code in Visual Studio but students couldn't. Don't have the specifics yet but sounds like a similar problem to what you're describing.

[JBlue46]

@Bankesy

 

That sounds like the same issue, students can run up Visual Studio Code fine but you can just see it spinning in the bottom left corner 'Discovering Python interpreters'. That seems to fail and you get a message in the bottom right to 'Select Interpreter':

 

Even with the 'python.defaultInterpreterPath' setting pointing directly to the install they still don't see it

[Bankesy]

@JBlue46

 

I'm WFH today but will check with Head of Department tomorrow, I haven't seen the issue for myself yet but she did say she would grab some screenshots next time she has that class. I'll let you know if you don't figure it out first.

 

Hopefully somebody who knows what they are doing will respond to you instead

[jtotheb]

We use GPP to push out a settings file that lives under appdata\Code\User\settings.json

 

There's a line in there that points to the Python interpreter. You could take the file from an account with elevated privileges and work backwards. Ours looked a bit like this:

{

"python.defaultInterpreterPath": "C:\\program files\\python310\\python.exe"

}

 

You can also use that file to control loads of other settings if you play around with an elevated account and see what gets written to it.

[Bankesy]

@JBlue46

 

Just got a screenshot of our problem, very similar to yours but not exactly the same.