Spin and PASM in Visual Studio
John R.
Posts: 1,376
Hey gang:
Has anyone thought about creating a "Language Service" for Visual Studio that would support the Prop? For that matter, has anyone here created a Language Service for anything in Visual Studio?
The concept of playing in the same environment that I have to work it is attractive, and there are cretainly lots of features that could be implemented, either as part of the language service, or as macros, etc.
I've only looked into this far enough to see that it's possible. I have no idea how practicable it would be, or how easy/hard it would be to link into the tools to compile and download.
Does anyone besides me think this might be a useful tool?
John R.
Has anyone thought about creating a "Language Service" for Visual Studio that would support the Prop? For that matter, has anyone here created a Language Service for anything in Visual Studio?
The concept of playing in the same environment that I have to work it is attractive, and there are cretainly lots of features that could be implemented, either as part of the language service, or as macros, etc.
I've only looked into this far enough to see that it's possible. I have no idea how practicable it would be, or how easy/hard it would be to link into the tools to compile and download.
Does anyone besides me think this might be a useful tool?
John R.
Comments
btw: Having BST why do you need anything else ?
(I think that an eclipse plugin would be ways more useful due to the multiplatform capabilities).
Also, I am getting sick of the constant and immediate anti Microsoft comments from people on these forums. This is not the place for it, and frankly, it is very unwelcoming. It probably turns away people that would otherwise participate here. I don't care if you hate Microsoft, or what alternative you prefer. Find another place to wage that war.
OK, as long as you insist, how about if all MS code in the world stopped running for an hour? How's that for freaking practical?
Get over it, MS is not the only option, but it is not the devil incarnate either. Let's knock it off, and get back on point.
In a more constructive vain, I find it interesting that most "MS People" (by choice or not) have respect and understanding for other platforms and that these platforms have a place. It seems the "non-Microsoft" folks seem to be the intollerant jerks.
As mentioned above (or below, depending on your viewing preferences), this forum is not the place for these wars. (This comment is directed at myself too...)
BACK ON POINT or SHUTUP!
Further ranting about one OS/Platform over another will result in me asking the moderators to lock and/or delete this thread.
This thread is about a Language Service for MS Studio, and is NOT indended to be a discussion of other alternatives.
Please start a separate thread if you wish to discuss the pros and cons of various development environments, or wage any other type of war!
And yes, Eclipse might be useful, but I, and others work in the MS Visual Studio (by choice or by necesity) in our "day jobs", and there may be an interest in being able to work in an environment comfortable to us, just as others may be more comfortable working in Lynux, Max OS, and working with Eclipse, BST or whatever.
Please keep this on topic.
Because If I find something I like chances are I'll have to use an OS the program was written for. It's not because I hate a popular OS, any OS will have faults if you look hard enough.
Just keep in mind that if you write a program people like there is going to someone that's going ask why didn't you use linux, macOS, or whatever.
If you use MS to write a program I'd like to see someone make a standalone prog that can be run in WINE in linux. One program could be run on two different OS's. I haven't figure that out with vb express yet.I'm not a very good programmer.
Let me be the first to say just go for it and lets see what you come up with.
-dan
Get a life - looking at beginning of thread there were other suggestions and I was responding to one of them - what a way to shutdown people on the forum
If we are talking about vaporware, then there's no point in continuing the conversation / thread (as noted by Yoda; an I agree with). If we are NOT talking about vaporware, the fact remains that some of us do, weather guided by either a higher or lower power, use M$ products. Some by choice, others forced, but in the end, we do use them.
My point of this posting: Has anyone put together the language extension for M$ VS (Visual Studio / VB or VC) ?
For the ones interested in making a go at it; here's a great source of information: Code Project
KK
And taking a thread into a holy war of OS/Tools doesn't hack people off and turn them away. I thought I was farily polite, and just pointed out the topic of THIS thread, and invited anyone to start another thread on the merits of one of whatever vs another.
I am also sick and tired of seeing posts along the lines of "if it's MS it sucks" or "MS ruined my sdcard" followed by "no it didn't", or "it NEEDs to be in XXX and who cares about YYY".
I'M MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE!
If making this statment makes me an outcase, or kills this thread, then so be it. I am sick of seeing myself and others being made to feel like 2nd class citizens because of the choices we make. That feeling of discust applies to those for and against whatever your choice of bitching happens to be. (meaning for or against MS, Lynux or whatever)
John R.
Yes, it is "possible" to make IntilliSense work, along with code completion, snippets, auto formatting, etc.
How much effort this takes is an unknown at this point.
The Concept of a "Language Service" is that the environment treats the "new language" as one of its own. The reality is that at least some of this needs to be coded. I haven't dug far enough down to find out how much is simply a list of key words and arguments, etc., and how much (if any) is writing a "character by caracter parser".
Thanks for the link to that Code Project Article. I will be looking into this. If it's not too time consuming I might just make one for Spin/PASM. I've got a lot of projects on my plate right now, so I can't promise anything quickly.
I only have VS 2008 currently, so that is what I can make it work on. If I come up with a proper justification for purchasing VS 2010, then I will move up to it.
Yes. Once the "language service" is written for Spin, it's a simple matter of defining the Schema for IntelliSense and telling VS to use it.
The hard part is that "language service" part. :-) That's where all the work is done to tell VS how to present, indent, highlight, colorcode, parse, etc. the Spin/PASM language constructs.
Bill
Roy,
Let me know if you need any help on this. I, too, don't have a lot of time but it is definetly something I'm interested in seeing/using.
Bill
I too find it somewhat puerile on some people to take pleasure at breaking sugar on MS back: without the incredible technical commitments of this company, personal computing (and probably general computing for a large part) would be nowhere near it is today. Without MS products, PC hobbists would still be in a dark cave, ecstatic at toggling 0 and 1 switches ;-)
As for your feeling of being treated as 2nd class, take heart: here's the latest poll (october 2010) on OS usage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux). All in all, 83.14% of world users goes to MS. Not bad, its a very busy 2nd class indeed.
No wonder so many serious programmers, scientists and electronic engineers use MS products in their working environment: they've been there for 35 years. At the very fine tip of development, that is.
I'd love to see a language service for VS...
Just my two cents.
Cheers,
Alex
You say it as if MS would have invented it all. Sorry, they constructed (bought other companies) in the shoulders of gigants. And we will never know what a future we would have without ms. They products are widely used because they are sold with computers. Most people do not know there is a choice, nor they were offered one. They got what was sold to them (you may say the same why people get iPods...).
The ones who know there is a choice sometimes use it and others can't because they are/were locked in because sadly there are no alternatives or the files are just not compatible.
And real software, runs on Unix (too)
I didn't implied that MS invented it all... but at more than 10k patents (http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/021009-microsoft-patent.html?ap1=rcb) and 35 years in business with currently over 89k employees, they've certainly invented some!
Programming softwares are not bundled with OS: you must purchase them separately. BTW, it is interesting to see that Parallax chose to support the propeller on MS platform only... (granted BST addresses the rest).
Unix is nice but sooooo dry.
Cheers,
Alex
Here's the original question:
If you're writing a post that includes comments that are either pro-MS or anti-MS, or about people who are pro- or anti-MS, how about you stop before clicking "Submit Reply", and go away for two minutes, and when you come back, ask yourself if it's really necessary to send what you've written?
I'm a fairly new Mod, and I haven't yet locked any threads, and I'd love to see that it can be possible to avoid having to. I'll bet you guys can all rise to the occasion. Prove me right.
Alternative way to put it: I'll bet you can show me that you're capable of behaving better than a politician does. Wouldn't it be embarrassing if you showed us that you can't?
For instance, I recently put together an IDE in vb.net for Catalina. A big part of that is not just processing the language, but also handling the download.
I found this "The Language Service Wizard allows you to define syntax highlighting, syntax checking, block commenting, brace matching, statement completion, and quick info for your language."
I've hand coded some of that into the Catalina IDE - eg the syntax highlighting in color. One could probably add a few lines of code to do brace matchnig and block commenting.
The equivalent of 'brace matching' in spin is those little arrows that appear. (These are not in BST, and I imagine they are a bit hard to code). I wonder if visual studio could do those?
Statement completion would be brilliant. I love that part of vb.net where once you have defined a variable, the IDE knows about that and helps complete that variable when you start typing its name. It could be very nice to have a list of all the PUBs like in .net.
Some syntax checking would be handy too - eg => vs >= and := vs =
This is a very intriguing idea. I think it is worth pursuing.
Is there any way that bst could be used under it?
The advantages I see, presuming this is what you mean, is in the intellisense sections where spin instructions are highlighted and options appear.
Ouch! that was a big slap for my fairly innocuous comment, complete with smiley attached.
Your question was:
I did not realize that a negative answer was unacceptable. Please accept my apologies.
4Alex: MS bought plenty of patents.
Anyway with that said I posted an IDE for spin etc that used the homespun compiler some time way back.
This development system required a license to use although it was free to use.
This is a single installer complete with IDE, Homespun and a loader.
If there is any interest in it still I will remove the license requirement and post a download link, likewise I will update it for the latest homespun compiler (if there is one).
The IDE does support intellisense although I never got around to implementing it for spin. I started to support Catalina which included an installer for both the IDE and Catalina but never finished it so maybe time allowing and interest shown I will add these into it.
BTW it requires DotNET 2.0 to run:) so no OMG MS again noise.
Some pictures included.
Cheers
For those who are interested in such things here are a few screen shots.
The major problem I have with Visual Studio right now is there was a split from 2008 to 2010. Many things that were written in 2008 will not work in 2010. And stuff written for 2010 will not work in 2008.
I know many people still have 2005 and 2008. I myself still use 2008. I am not sure it would be worth it to develop a large project that will not work in 2010. Also, I am not sure enough people have 2010 to justify a large project there.
What bloat!