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In this update

  1. Overview
  2. We need your help
  3. Issue of the month
  4. Editor
  5. Always request screenshot on initial load, add ability to copy screenshot
  6. Pass the modal property from the PopupMessageEvent
  7. Sets stagingDir properly in DebugConfigurationProvider
  8. Allow spacing on dotted get paths
  9. Debugging
  10. Display a modal message when we fail to upload a package to the device
  11. Expose debug protocol port
  12. Add cli flag to run dap as standalone process
  13. BrighterScript
  14. Prevent publishing of empty files
  15. Assign .program to the builder BEFORE emitting afterProgramCreate event
  16. Adds support for libpkg: prefix
  17. Prevent overwriting the Program._manifest if already set on startup
  18. Backport v1 syntax changes
  19. Add plugin hooks for getDefinition
  20. Fix parsing issues with multi-index IndexedSet and IndexedGet
  21. Community Tools
  22. brs
  23. Print leading space before positive numbers
  24. Improved context handling for Callables
  25. Global functions GetInterface() and FindMemberFunction() now properly boxing parameters
  26. BrighterScript Preview features
  27. Renaming BrighterScript v0.66 alphas to v1
  28. Fixes transpile bug for typecast expressions wrapped in parentheses
  29. Diagnostics for Member Accessibility
  30. Diagnostics for accessing private or protected class members externally
  31. Add true, false, invalid to completion results
  32. Include function parameters in completion results
  33. Remove Parser.references
  34. Renamed File interface to BscFile
  35. Fix cross namespace collision detection
  36. XML fields of type color can accept strings or integers
  37. Improve member types for component fields
  38. Adds a findChildren function on AstNode
  39. Documentation
  40. Refactor bsconfig documentation
  41. For Contributors
  42. BrighterScript null safety improvements
  43. Fix create-vsix
  44. Fix the install-local and watch-all scripts
  45. Thank you

Overview

Welcome to the January 2024 edition of “What’s New in RokuCommunity.” Please consider subscribing to stay up to date with what’s happening in RokuCommunity.

We need your help

The RokuCommunity projects are maintained by a relatively small group of developers (mostly volunteers), and we have a growing list of unresolved issues. We need your help! There are many different ways you can contribute. Whether it’s addressing bugs, improving documentation, introducing new features, or simply helping us manage our expanding list of GitHub issues, your involvement would be greatly appreciated. We are more than happy to guide you in finding the most suitable contribution method that aligns with your interests. To learn more about how you can contribute, feel free to reach out to us on Slack, or explore the existing GitHub issues:

Issue of the month

In this section, we highlight a specific issue where we could benefit from the community’s assistance in finding a solution. These problems are generally straightforward to address, and serve as an excellent opportunity to become acquainted with the various RokuCommunity codebases.

This month, we’d like to highlight bslint#41. Many linters support enforcing that all files have a trailing newline, which ensures consistency across your project. @rokucommunity/bslint does not currently have a rule for this, which is something we’d love to see added. Here’s how the error looks in a typescript project using eslint:

image

If you’re interested in working on this feature, please comment on the github issue or reach out to us on Slack

Editor

Always request screenshot on initial load, add ability to copy screenshot

We fixed a few bugs in the “Device View” panel related to downloading a screenshot. Previously, without continuous screenshot capture enabled, the first screenshot would not download automatically, requiring a manual ‘refresh’ to initiate the download. Now it requests an initial screenshot which mitigates the issue.

image

Pass the modal property from the PopupMessageEvent

We’ve improved the way certain errors are presented in vscode by showing them in a modal dialog box. Previously many of these errors were shown in a little toast popup at the bottom right of vscode which can easily be missed. Users were regularly frustrated when vscode would fail to launch a debug session, so hopefully this will help draw more visibility to certain types of errors. The most common error is a bad password.

Here’s a screenshot of the new popup: Screenshot 2024-01-08 091210

Sets stagingDir properly in DebugConfigurationProvider

We’ve deprecated the stagingFolderPath launch.json option in favor of the more standard stagingDir property. Both will still work for a while, but we recommend you move to stagingDir so you don’t see those pesky “deprecated” messages in your launch.json. stagingDir wins, and if not set, check for stagingFolderPath.

Along with that, we also fixed a bug with debug sessions and launch.json files related to stagingDir and stagingFolderPath when stagingDir is also present in a root-level bsconfig.json. Now it should properly load the stagingDir and (deprecated) stagingFolderPath properly when specified by launch.json.

Allow spacing on dotted get paths

We’ve improved how the brightscript and BrighterScript formatter handles spaces between objects. It should now properly remove whitespace between anything separated by a dot. Here are some examples:

format

Debugging

Display a modal message when we fail to upload a package to the device

We added better error detection for specific debug session failures, especially when uploading the ZIP file fails. You should now see a nice popup with a better error message.

image

Expose debug protocol port

There’s a new launch.json setting called controlPort which is used to interact with the debug protocol.

Most developers won’t need to change this, but if you’re debugging through port forwarding, using an emulator, or some other nonstandard means, this should enable you to properly configure your launch settings.

image

Add cli flag to run dap as standalone process

We added support for running roku-debug in Debug Adapter Protocol (DAP) mode for use in IDEs.

roku-debug is the library that powers the debug session within vscode. However, with this setting, you can now use roku-debug to power debug sessions in other IDEs (like eclipse, vim/neovim, emacs, etc.). This should work with any editor that supports the debug adapter protocol.

You can activate this mode like this:

npx roku-debug --dap

You’ll typically need to configure your IDE to execute the command mentioned above. If you’ve integrated this functionality into an IDE, please let us know so we can update our documentation to show how to configure it! Here’s an example of how to configure DAP mode in Neovim.

BrighterScript

Prevent publishing of empty files

We’ve added a new BrighterScript config property called pruneEmptyCodeFiles which defaults to false. When set to true, brightscript files that are considered empty won’t be published during transpilation. It also adds a canBePruned property to the Brs and XML files.

Currently Brs files are considered empty if they don’t contain a FunctionStatement, MethodStatement, or a ClassStatement. (let us know if we missed one)

This will also remove imports of empty scripts. If a brightscript file that an xml files references has their canBePruned field return false, the associated import will be removed too.

On a large internal project, this resulted in significant compile-time speedups.

  • ultra 4800x (OS 12.5):

    • pruning off: 7250ms
    • pruning on: 4965ms

  • stick4k 3800x (OS 12.5):

    • pruning off: 5789ms
    • pruning on: 4342ms

  • express 3960x (OS 11.5):

    • pruning off: 8232ms
    • pruning on: 6111ms

Assign .program to the builder BEFORE emitting afterProgramCreate event

For BrighterScript plugin authors, we fixed a small bug where where the ProgramBuilder doesn’t have a reference to .program when the afterProgramCreate event fires. We solved this by assigning .program before emitting the event.

Adds support for libpkg: prefix

We fixed a bug in where component libraries that use libpkg:/ scheme for script imports would fail to find files.

You can now use libpkg:/ in xml script imports as well as BrighterScript import statements.

These both work now!

image

image

Prevent overwriting the Program._manifest if already set on startup

BrighterScript has added some safeguards around manifest loading to improve the way plugins can interact with it. There’s a hidden _manifest file on the Program class in BrighterScript. Some plugins use/abuse this to modify manifest values (to apply some preprocessing or sanitization).

However, there have historically been some strange timing issues around this process. To mitigate those issues, BrighterScript will now avoid replacing the manifest on startup if a plugin has already overwritten it.

Backport v1 syntax changes

If you weren’t aware, we’re working on a major revision of BrighterScript that includes type tracking, much better type safety, and many other improvements.

Some of the new features are things like:

  • typed array syntax
  • union type syntax
  • using built-in component/object/interface/event types
  • type cast syntax

To simplify testing BrighterScript v1 and facilitate switching back to v0, we backported the above syntaxes into the v0 releases. This means you can write newer syntax and commit that code without needing to undo it.

Now keep in mind, these new syntax features provide NO additional validation in the v0 release line.

In transpiled code:

  • Typed Arrays are converted to dynamic
  • Union types are converted to dynamic
  • Built in types are converted to object (just like Classes/interfaces)
  • Type casts are completely ignored and removed

Even if you’re not using/testing the v1 alphas, it might be worth using some of this new syntax just to more cleanly document your code. You can view all of the supported syntax in this unit test, but here are some examples:

image

Add plugin hooks for getDefinition

We’ve added a new BrighterScript plugin hook for go to definition. Plugins can define beforeProvideDefinition, provideDefinition, or afterProvideDefinition to add more entries into the results of that operation.

We converted the internal BrighterScript go to definition to leverage these same plugin hooks. You can check that out in BscPlugin.ts, but here’s a sample:

image

Fix parsing issues with multi-index IndexedSet and IndexedGet

We’ve fixed parsing and transpile issues with multi-index IndexedGetExpression and IndexedSetStatement.

image

Community Tools

brs

We’ve made a few improvements to the brs emulator:

  • fixed the printing of positive number to show a leading space before positive numbers, just like Roku.
  • Fixed the comparison involving Long numbers
  • Updated all affected test cases.

You can check out the @rokucommunity/brs#39 for more information.

Improved context handling for Callables

The original method for identifying the context (m object) for Callables relied on re-evaluating the source during a dot-chained call, that had performance issues, and caused the side effect of issue #9. That solution did not solved the performance issue fully.

In the new solution, we save a reference for the context for each callable, eliminating the need of re-evaluation, and fixed all side effects.

The end result is that there should no longer be a performance issue for calling dot chained calls.

Global functions GetInterface() and FindMemberFunction() now properly boxing parameters

Both of the methods GetInterface() and FindMemberFunction() were not properly boxing parameters to behave like a Roku device. These have been fixed as of @rokucommunity/brs v0.45.4

BrighterScript Preview features

Renaming BrighterScript v0.66 alphas to v1

We’re transitioning BrighterScript towards a v1.0.0 release!

As we’ve been working on the BrighterScript v0.66 alphas, we noticed that there were more and more breaking changes that we wanted to implement. It became clear that we were actually implementing a full major version change.

BrighterScript was introduced as an experiment, that slowly grew into a product that is relied on by many production applications on a daily basis. At this point, we owe it to the community to signal that we have confidence in the project. We can think of no better way to do that than to move to a v1 release.

We’re hopeful that the v1 release will be ready by this summer, but we can’t guarantee a release date at this time (we’re very busy here at RokuCommunity). You can track our progress in the v1.0.0 milestone.

At the time of this publication, the latest BrighterScript v1 alpha is v1.0.0-alpha.27. You can try out the latest version of BrighterScript v1 alphas by running:

npm install brighterscript@next

Here are some enhancements that we’ve added to the brighterscript v1 alphas this month:

Fixes transpile bug for typecast expressions wrapped in parentheses

The BrightScript runtime doesn’t like when parentheses are used exclusively to wrap a variable. For example, this will cause a run-time error:

sub addSomeProperty(obj)
      (obj).append({key: "value"})
end sub

This was causing issues when transpiling a typecast expression like this::

sub addSomeProperty(obj)
      (obj as roAssociativeArray).append({key: "value"})
end sub

So to mitigate that, we’ve fixed the transpiler to so that if an expression that is grouped is a typecast, it does not include the parentheses.

Diagnostics for Member Accessibility

We’ve added diagnostics for setting unknown fields of classes

image

image

Diagnostics for accessing private or protected class members externally

We’ve added diagnostics for accessing private or protected class members when you shouldn’t have access to them.

Private members are available in the class that defined them. Protected members are available in the class that defined them, and all sub classes.

Add true, false, invalid to completion results

We’ve added true, false, and invalid to completion items when appropriate. image

Include function parameters in completion results

We now ensure that function parameters are included in completion results, even if you’re at the end of the function block. private and protected class members only are included in completion results when they are accessible

image

Remove Parser.references

We’ve completely removed the Parser.references collection from BrighterScript. Historically, this was used to improve performance for plugins. However, the AST walking logic is significantly faster now, and we have much better patterns and AST detection mechanisms, so we have decided to eliminate Parser.references.

We’ve removed it because it causes confusion for plugins when trying to figure out how to properly make AST edits. Often an AST edit wouldn’t update the Parser.references collection and thus making future plugin modifications complicated or out of sync.

If you’re using this in your plugin, please consider switching to an AST walk function to find these items.

Renamed File interface to BscFile

When the file API first landed, we had been using the interface name File. However, there’s already a global interface with that name in TypeScript, which caused lots of confusion when writing plugins. To mitigate this, we have renamed our interface BscFile. TypeScript will correctly prompt for imports when using this interface, and it no longer collides with the global interface.

Fix cross namespace collision detection

We fixed a bug where a const and a function are not allowed to have the same name across different namespaces. This is now supported (as expected).

image

XML fields of type color can accept strings or integers

XML fields with type="color" can now accept strings or integers.

image

Improve member types for component fields

We updated BrighterScript’s internal understanding of <interface> function and field entries as defined here: https://developer.roku.com/docs/references/scenegraph/xml-elements/interface.md#attributes

We also fixed a bug with the way type="array" was handled, so that should no longer be causing diagnostics when used correctly.

Adds a findChildren function on AstNode

We’ve added a new method on AstNode called .findChildren() to support finding all nodes of a specific type (like namespaces, classes, consts, etc). The matcher is just a function, so the evaluation can work for anything.

Documentation

Refactor bsconfig documentation

We’ve made some large changes to the structure of the BrighterScript readme:

List of changes:

  • Add minimal bsconfig.json example, copied from the brighterscript-template project
  • Make a new page for bsconfig documentation
  • Make a new page for documentation on suppressing error messages
  • Edit “extends” and “optional extends” sections to reduce duplication
  • Alphabetize bsconfig documentation
  • Add table of contents for bsconfig documentation
  • Add cross-links to bsconfig documentation, connecting sections together
  • A few tweaks to markdown formatting which do not affect the rendered page, such as adding or removing some extra newlines for consistency
  • Remove reference to ignoreErrorCodes flag in “bs ignore” documentation
  • Remove self-effacing statement about project being likely to contain bugs in “bs ignore” documentation

For Contributors

BrighterScript null safety improvements

We’ve started the process of converting the entire BrighterScript codebase to be null safe (by enabling the strictNullChecks tsconfig.json setting). This month we’ve made some great progress. There’s not much user-facing to discuss, but feel free to look through #996 and #1000.

Fix create-vsix

We’ve overhauled the create-vsix github action to improve inter-project linking when building custom vsix. It should be much better at building vsix that depend on changes that span multiple projects all having the same branch name.

For contributors, here’s what you need to know:

  • add the create-vsix tag to a PR
  • make sure inter-dependent projects (such as vscode-brightscript-language, roku-deploy, BrighterScript, etc…) all have the same branch name

GitHub Actions will auto-generate a new vsix every time you push code to the PR, and a bot will comment with instructions on how to install that vsix.

You can see an example on this PR, but here’s a screenshot:

image

Fix the install-local and watch-all scripts

The install-local script was only creating links between sibling projects into vscode-brightscript-language. However, some of the other projects depend on each other as well, so they should all be inter-linked.

So we updated the watch-all script to run the projects in order as well so we ensure the dependent projects are built before spinning up the next watcher. This does have the downside of showing all package.json and package-lock.json files as modified, but you can just undo the changes and run npm install local again when you need to get changes.

Thank you

Last but certainly not least, a big Thank You to the following people who contributed this month:

Contributions to vscode-brightscript-language:

Contributions to brighterscript:

Contributions to roku-debug:

Contributions to brighterscript-formatter:

Contributions to bslint:

Contributions to brs:

  • @lvcabral (Marcelo Lv Cabral)
    • Fixed #16 Print leading space before positive numbers (PR #39)
    • Fixed #38 - Improved context handling for Callables (PR #40)
    • Fixed #41 - Global functions GetInterface() and FindMemberFunction() are not properly boxing parameters (PR #42)

Updates

  1. April 2024
  2. March 2024
  3. February 2024
  4. January 2024
  5. December 2023
  6. November 2023
  7. October 2023
  8. September 2023
  9. August 2023
  10. July 2023
  11. June 2023
  12. May 2023
  13. April 2023
  14. March 2023
  15. February 2023
  16. January 2023
  17. December 2022
  18. November 2022
  19. October 2022
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