ChironLang VS Code Extension

Official Visual Studio Code extension for ChironLang, providing a robust development environment for the Chiron Framework. This extension leverages the Language Server Protocol (LSP) to bring modern IDE features to Chiron developers.

📦 Prerequisites: Installing uv

The ChironLang extension requires the uv package manager to execute the interpreter. Follow the instructions below for your operating system:

macOS & Linux

Open your terminal and run:

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

For macOS, you can also use:

brew install uv

Windows

powershell -c "ir https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex"

Verification

Once the script completes, restart your terminal or run source $HOME/.cargo/env (if applicable) and verify the installation by checking the version:

uv --version

🚀 Features

Intelligent Code Editing

• Syntax Highlighting: Full support for keywords, identifiers, operators, and literals via TextMate grammar.
• Scope-aware Autocompletion: Context-sensitive suggestions for variables, functions, and parameters available in the current scope.
• Hover Information: View function signatures and variable metadata instantly by hovering over symbols.
• Jump to Definition: Seamlessly navigate to function or symbol declarations using Ctrl + Click or Cmd + Click.

Validation & Reliability

• Live Diagnostics: Real-time error reporting for parsing and semantic checks displayed directly in the editor.
• Semantic Error Highlighting: Automatically detects calls to undefined functions or use of undeclared variables.

Developer Experience

• Integrated Run Button: Execute .tl files directly from the editor title bar via a dedicated play icon.
  • Run without variables: Executes the file with no input parameters.
  • Run with variables: Prompts for a Python-style dictionary to pass as input flags.
  • Run with Webview: Full support for rendering turtle graphics commands, such as forward, left, and right, within a dedicated VS Code webview
• Smart Formatting: Includes automatic bracket closing for (), [], and {} and intelligent auto-indentation for nested blocks.
• Comment Support: Full recognition of inline and block comments to improve code documentation.

🛠 Language Capabilities

The extension fully supports the latest language extensions implemented in the framework:

• User-defined Functions: Supports multiple parameters, return statements, and recursion.
• Arrays: Full support for declarations, element assignment, and indexed access.
• Advanced Operators: Includes modulo (%) and exponentiation (**) arithmetic operators.
• I/O Support: Integrated printf command for debugging and program interaction.

💻 Architecture

The extension is built on a modular client-server architecture:

• Client: A lightweight TypeScript-based VS Code extension.
• Language Server: A TypeScript-based server that integrates with the Chiron compiler using ANTLR4.
• Communication: Uses JSON-RPC over standard I/O.

🗺 Roadmap

Planned future enhancements include:

• Debugger Integration: Implementing the Debug Adapter Protocol (DAP) for breakpoints and variable inspection.
• Enhanced Autocompletion: Support for snippets and improved completion ranking.
• Error Recovery: Improving parser resilience to provide better diagnostics for malformed input.

👥 Authors

• Dnyanesh Hemendra Shinde (230390)
• Nikhilesh Joshi (230700)
• Yatharth Dangi (231197)

GitHub Repository: EMPEROR82/ChironIITK-CS335