Overview

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

This was a light month in terms of releases. We have a lot of behind-the-scenes work going on in the brighterscript project, more on that next month.

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:

• vscode-brightscript-language
• brighterscript
• brighterscript-formatter
• roku-deploy
• roku-debug
• bslint
• ropm
• brs
• roku-report-analyzer
• @rokucommunity/promises
• roku-http

Editor

Add new Delete button in File System view

We added a new delete button in the Roku File System view in vscode. This should make it much easier to delete files from the currently side-loaded dev app. One nice use case is when you want to delete cached files from cachefs:.

Add commands to rekey device and create packages

We’ve finally added support for several common actions in the Roku development ecosystem: creating packages and rekeying devices. You can access these new commands through the command pallet. They will walk you through a series of questions (such as “what device”, “what’s your signing password”, etc). We understand that some of this information is highly sensitive in nature, so rest assured, we do not store or save any of this information, it’s kept in memory during the operation, and then promptly deleted as soon as the task is complete. You can audit our logic by reviewing this file.

Here’s an overview of the new commands:

1. BrightScript: Rekey Device: Rekey the specified device based on the signing password ("brightscript.remoteControl.signingPassword") and package file ("brightscript.remoteControl.signedPackagePath") provided.

2. BrightScript: Create Package: This will present user a list of available launch configs to choose from or manual entries. Once selected it will create a .zip file and .pkg file based on the config and will save them to the ${workspacefolder}/out

3. BrightScript: Rekey Device and Create Package: This will first rekey device and then create package for the selected launch config

Here’s a quick demo of the Rekey Device command in action:

Split panel scenegraph inspector

The SceneGraph Inspector panel now supports showing details to the right of the tree when the panel is large enough. This is a nice improvement that results in a more familiar interface for those who were used to the RALE layout.

Add support for opening SceneGraph Inspector in panel

The SceneGraph Inspector can now be opened in a completely new tab! Also as of the April 2024 release of VSCode, you can also move that panel from the current window to a new window, but there’s no programmatic way to do this so you’ll need to move it there yourself. This should provide much greater flexibility when using this panel.

Add support for focusing a node in SceneGraph Inspector

We’ve added a new “focus node” button in the SceneGraph Inspector which will pass focus to the selected node.

Preview features

roku-deploy v4

This month we started working on a v4 release of roku-deploy. This will bring a series of breaking changes that have been needed for a while now. Here are some of the highlights:

• we created specific interfaces for each function parameter (instead of that single large confusing RokuDeployOptions interface) (#126)
• removed retainStagingFolder which was deprecated (#130)
• better support for cross-platform path separators (#131)
• better handling when dest is missing (#130)
• removed the default function exports. You should import { rokuDeploy } from 'roku-deploy'; now. (#144)
• added a proper CLI so you can now do things like npx roku-deploy sideload --host 192.168.1.123 --password aaaa --rootDir ./src without needing a custom nodejs script
• Throw exceptions on missing options (#156)
• added a cwd option (158)

We’ll be creating a migration guide in the roku-deploy v4 readme closer to the official release.

Thank you

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

Contributions to vscode-brightscript-language:

• @fumer-fubotv (fumer-fubotv)
  • Add commands to rekey device and create packages (PR #509)
• @iBicha (Brahim Hadriche)
  • Delete button in FS view (PR #552)
• @triwav (Brian Leighty)
  • Split panel scenegraph inspector (PR #555)
  • Add support for opening SceneGraph Inspector in panel (PR #561)
  • Add support for focusing a node in SceneGraph Inspector (PR #563)
• @TwitchBronBron (Bronley Plumb)
  • Don’t hardlink the workspace file during install-local (b874df2)

Contributions to roku-deploy:

• @MilapNaik (Milap Naik)
  • Adding individual interfaces (PR #126)
  • Remove retain staging folder which was deprecated (PR #130)
  • Don’t normalize file patterns (PR #131)
  • Bug with {src;dest} object handling (PR #135)
  • Add cli commands (PR #139)
  • Eliminate top index functions (PR #144)
  • Throw exceptions on missing options (PR #156)
  • Upgrade typescript & other packages (PR #157)
  • Add cwd option (PR #158)
• @TwitchBronBron (Bronley Plumb)
  • Fix tests (d4c1583)
  • Add cli commands and rename roku-deploy functions, reorganize functions (PR #142)
  • Prep build.yml for alpha releases (1872508)