Fixes premature negative caching of avatars

Only permanently caches "no avatar" when a provider was actually consulted,
preventing fallback sources from being skipped on retry when no integration
or custom remote was available.

(#5155)

Author: sergeibbb

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -7,6 +7,7 @@ The format is based on [Keep a Changelog](http://keepachangelog.com/) and this p
 ## [Unreleased]
 
 ### Added
+
 - Adds an optional `avatar` URL template to custom remotes in the `gitlens.remotes` setting — enables corporate and self-hosted setups to resolve commit-author avatars via a templated URL with `${email}`, `${emailName}`, `${domain}`, and `${size}` tokens; identity values are component-encoded before interpolation to keep attacker-controllable commit emails from injecting URL-structural characters, and templates configured via workspace settings require explicit user approval on first use in a trusted workspace (revocable via _GitLens: Reset > Approved Avatar URL Templates..._) ([#302](https://github.com/gitkraken/vscode-gitlens/issues/302), [#5155](https://github.com/gitkraken/vscode-gitlens/pull/5155)) — thanks to [PR #1636](https://github.com/gitkraken/vscode-gitlens/pull/1636) by Tmk ([@tmkx](https://github.com/tmkx))
 
 ## [18.0.0] - 2026-05-27

src/avatars.ts

@@ -232,13 +232,15 @@ async function getAvatarUriFromRemoteProvider(
 
 	try {
 		let account: CommitAuthor | undefined;
+		let hasAvatarSource = false;
 		// if (typeof repoPathOrCommit === 'string') {
 		// 	const remote = await Container.instance.git.getRichRemoteProvider(repoPathOrCommit);
 		// 	account = await remote?.provider.getAccountForEmail(email, { avatarSize: size });
 		// } else {
 		if (typeof repoPathOrCommit !== 'string') {
 			const remote = await getBestRemoteWithIntegration(repoPathOrCommit.repoPath);
 			if (remote != null && remoteSupportsIntegration(remote)) {
+				hasAvatarSource = true;
 				account = await (
 					await getRemoteIntegration(remote)
 				)?.getAccountForCommit(remote.provider.repoDesc, repoPathOrCommit.ref, {
@@ -266,10 +268,12 @@ async function getAvatarUriFromRemoteProvider(
 		}
 
 		if (account?.avatarUrl == null) {
-			// If we have no account assume that won't change (without a reset), so set the timestamp to "never expire"
-			avatar.uri = undefined;
-			avatar.timestamp = Infinity;
-			avatar.retries = 0;
+			if (hasAvatarSource) {
+				// A provider was consulted but returned no avatar — permanently cache "no result"
+				avatar.uri = undefined;
+				avatar.timestamp = Infinity;
+				avatar.retries = 0;
+			}
 
 			return undefined;
 		}