Refactoring: move module member to different module

[ynouri]

Related existing issues: microsoft/vscode-python#4628

Same feature as described on this PyCharm documentation page:
https://www.jetbrains.com/help/pycharm/move-refactorings.html#move_module_members

Would be used as such:

• Select variable or function foo
• Press shortcut or select "Move" action
• Select an existing destination module bar.py
• The imports of foo across the whole project are updated to reflect the change

I'm creating a new feature request since microsoft/vscode-python#4628 seems to focus on the file renaming refactoring feature.

[karthiknadig]

Thank you for the suggestion! We have marked 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 the opening comment gets to help us make our decision.

[hmoravec]

I consider Move Refactorings (and Changing Signature) a fundamental functionality for every developer working on any non-trivial codebase. I've been a long term PyCharm user but I always give a try to VS Code once in a while to see if it is ready to be my primary IDE. Unfortunately lack of this sends me again back to PyCharm.

I'm also not sure if votes on this issue are the right measure of its importance. I think many developers who give VS Code a try but then are not able to do basic stuff which they are used to do easily in other IDEs like PyCharm just give up and go back to their IDE without digging deep into issues on GitHub in multiple different repos. It took me quite a while to land on this page.

[douglasrizzo]

I also consider this a very useful feature. I can't really list the use cases of this except for when I realize that a method/function that is already working properly would be better suited residing in another class/module, but changing all of its usages in the code would be really tedious and error-prone.

Right now I do it by using the Ctrl + Shift + H functionality (Replace in Project), but having a foolproof, automated way would be awesome.

[cperezabo]

I believe people at Microsoft don't use VSCode at all... It is just impossible to be productive without refactorings, good auto complete, real auto import, and many other things. If you work without that stuff, dude.... download some pro tools and try them off to get inspired!

[disrupted]

I believe people at Microsoft don't use VSCode at all... It is just impossible to be productive without refactorings, good auto complete, real auto import, and many other things. If you work without that stuff, dude.... download some pro tools and try them off to get inspired!

not sure what you're on about, but Pylance has most of the stuff you mentioned

[cperezabo]

Hi @disrupted, do you call this real auto import?

CleanShot.2021-10-13.at.12.32.34.mp4

It works in some cases where related stuff gets indexed, other way it won't work.

[jakebailey]

Can you please try enabling indexing with this?

"python.analysis.indexing": true

For user code, see also #1055.

[hmoravec]

@jakebailey I'm experiencing the same behavior as @cperezabo and I have enabled the indexing option long time ago (although when I checked it now, it says Unknow Configuration Setting).

When I use some object from my workspace, at first I have to use Go to symbol in workspace for this new symbol and wait until it shows the symbol in dropdown menu, which probably updates the index, then wait a few seconds and then it usually works. But in total this procedure takes longer than if I just wrote the import statement myself :(.

[jakebailey]

For auto-import completions from symbols in your workspace, that is explicitly #1055; I would comment there. It's expected at the moment for auto-imports from the workspace to work only on quick fixes, though we'd like to change that, which is what #1055 is all about.

This thread is about refactorings; I'd rather we continue conversations about auto imports in the right issue.

[cperezabo]

Can you please try enabling indexing with this?

"python.analysis.indexing": true

For user code, see also #1055.

@jakebailey, that doesn't work, I already tried it some time ago, at least not in the expected way.

[bjarkemoensted]

Any updates on this? Not being able to refactor is a huge obstacle.

[ivanlen]

Yeah, this is a basic refactor functionality. Especially when you are used to pycharm refactor tools. It's kind of downgrading lots of levels :S .

[heejaechang]

@bjarkemoensted we started doing incremental rollout for module rename refactoring. member move is being worked on. still require more work.

[ivanlen]

any update? thanks :)

[heejaechang]

@cperezabo @hmoravec if you can open your own issue with issues you are having, it would be easier for us to track and address the issues. and leave this issue for the refactoring.

[amir-abdi]

Any updates?
Is there a release (or unstable/nightly-build release?) scheduled with this feature?

[emirkmo]

Seems like this is already available in the JS and TypeScript extensions of VSCode, maybe that could be looked to for help?

This is one of the biggest current downsides to switching from pycharm for me. Makes code refactoring a pain.

[alexmolas]

Is there any update on this topic? I don't understand why this is not yet implemented. It's evident that the need of this feature is critical for all the developers, but it seems that there's no work towards solving that 😢

[heejaechang]

it was blocked by some infrastructure work. about 70% done. work will be resumed soon.

[cmobarry]

Recent news on Python move (between modules) refactoring?

[heejaechang]

working on it this sprint.

[DanielMS93]

will you let us know on this thread when it is complete?

[heejaechang]

will do. almost done. but we probably will start with an option that is off by default first.

[emirkmo]

@heejaechang, please let us know if you want tests or feedback. I have oodles of long python files to explode out.

[luabud]

Hey folks, this is now available in the latest pre-release version of the Pylance extension. You can set "python.analysis.refactoring.allowMovingSymbols": true in your settings.json to try it out. This setting is on by default for those using the pre-release version of Pylance in VS Code Insiders. Feedback is appreciated 😊

[noklam]

Hey @heejaechang, thanks for jumping in. It would be nice if there is a reason to see why "move symbol" is not available, it would be better to be able to click on it and show an error rather than just making that option disappear. IMO this experience is much smoother in PyCharm, thus I am very excited when I find out VSCode actually support this.

For the reproducer, there is nothing special. I am working on this project, what I have is an editable install of the kedro project. Things like go to definition and find reference works, so I guess the index is working.

git clone https://github.com/kedro-org/kedro.git
pip install -e .

[noklam]

I just found out that I have an outdate setting for Pylance, before this the repository was in a "Github" folder, after updating the path I can see the "move symbol to" option! I still think this is not ideal because when I do Ctrl + click, it goes to the correct file, only this particular feature is failing. It would give me more hint if there is an explicit error.

[heejaechang]

move symbol only works between user files, if you install a repo as editable install and reference it from project (the one you installed repro as editable install), symbols in the repro won't be movable. we will treat those repro as third party package and consider it as readonly.

if it is not the case, It would be better to open an issue and provide some context.

[ShravanSunder]

it doesn't seem like we can move classes to a new file. I would think that would be an appropriate usecase?

[heejaechang]

put cursor on the name of the class rather than select the whole class.

[pradyunsg]

I've done a few manual attempts of the basic cases and the pre-release seems to work pretty well on moving a single thing! The import rewriting is appreciated as well. It doesn't clean up the old imports every time, but it's something that pylance does flag and is easy-enough to remove with auto-fixes from import cleaning up logic (ALA ruff).

• One issue that I've hit is when moving files and getting the OS file selection box, it only lets me pick folders rather than files, when I choose to "Move to..." -> manually enter/select thingie.
• One improvement/feature/follow-up I'd appreciate with this: being able to moving a function and it's entire "cone" defined within a file into another file.
  I hit this while trying to split a single file that contains CLI logic + datetime math + API calls to GitHub + API calls to Discourse as functions, and moving them to separate files). It isn't clear to me whether that's even possible at the moment! :)

[debonte]

It doesn't clean up the old imports every time...

@pradyunsg, this is coming soon

Could you please open issues on your two bullet points above?

[heejaechang]

One issue that I've hit is when moving files and getting the OS file selection box, it only lets me pick folders rather than files, when I choose to "Move to..." -> manually enter/select thingie.

I can't repro this on windows. if you can provide me repro steps, I will take a look again.

[heejaechang]

One improvement/feature/follow-up I'd appreciate with this: being able to moving a function and it's entire "cone" defined within a file into another file.

I am not quite sure what you meant by this. can you open an issue with repro steps as Erik suggested?

[pradyunsg]

(FWIW, filing this issue is on my TODO list -- I'll do so soon)

[declanoller]

I can't seem to get this to work. When I right click on the class or function name, click refactor, and then "move symbol to new file", it gives me the error cannot find a symbol to move and nothing happens.

Here are my versions:

Version: 1.98.1
Commit: 2fc07b811f760549dab9be9d2bedd06c51dfcb9a
Date: 2025-03-10T15:38:08.854Z
Electron: 34.2.0
ElectronBuildId: 11160463
Chromium: 132.0.6834.196
Node.js: 20.18.2
V8: 13.2.152.36-electron.0
OS: Linux x64 6.11.0-17-generic snap

python extension:

Identifier
ms-python.python
Version
2025.2.0
Last Updated
2025-03-13, 01:32:26

pylance extension:

Identifier
ms-python.vscode-pylance
Version
2025.3.1
Last Updated
2025-03-07, 17:01:43

Am I using this incorrectly somehow? I've tried the same thing in different modules, etc, same result.

[rchiodo]

Yeah I can reproduce the error. I'll enter an issue.

[rchiodo]

Thanks for the help finding the bug. I entered it here:
#7042

[declanoller]

I'm surprised no one hit this before, because it's standard for git repos to have hyphens rather than spaces 🤔

of course, and thank you for the speedy responses and maintaining it!

[vbrozik]

it's standard for git repos to have hyphens

Yes, by convention repositories have hyphens as separators in their names but Python identifiers (like module names) cannot normally use hyphens, because this character is the minus operator. Identifiers in Python and many other programming languages use underscores as separators.

The most common directory structure of a repository with a Python package looks like this:

repository-name/
	src/
		main_python_module_name/
			__init__.py
			submodule1.py
			submodule2.py
			submodule3/
				__init__.py
				submodule31.py
				submodule32.py
	pyproject.toml

The Python package name is defined inside pyproject.toml. In simple cases it would be the same as the main_python_module_name and the repository name could also be the same with underscores replaced by hyphens.

[declanoller]

@vbrozik that's true, but does that solve the problem here?

For example, I cloned the sphinx-pyproject repo (note the hyphen). In its pyproject.toml it says package = "sphinx_pyproject" and package_root = "sphinx_pyproject". So I put those two test_source.py and test_target.py files in the dir sphinx-pyproject/sphinx_pyproject/, and tried to do the refactor move. I still get the error as above. Maybe I'd have to actually pip install it to have that register and get moved correctly?