README

The main goal of the plugin is to create an environment to work with the Primate Framework.

This plugin is self-contained will install files and dependencies for framework with itself. All the user needs to do is to activate the extension once to get the required dependencies to work.

Please look at Contributing on how to start building and working.

Features

The main extension features revolves around setting up the proper environment for the primate toolchain to function and provide the development capacity for the same.

The main facality is around organization and initialization of Environment and then providing a way to create new application with ready to run retargetable script.

Initialization - Activity Bar

This gives the main feature of providing with dependencies.json, checkDependencies.sh, install.sh. A more human-friendly approach is given with a README.md that would provide the user with steps and various things to look out for.

Organization - Activity Bar

Once the user has followed the directions as provided per initialization and all dependencies are matched for making sure primate works, organization provides user to create a new application that would match the necessary naming convention (C++ name convention is followed).

Autocomplete - Backend Feature

The extension also contributes to the autocomplete feature that allows the user to develop code for specific primate requirements. The autocomplete extension are developed for C++ and Text file (that takes info from scala files on the basis of Code Outline).

Most of the feature of the extension automatically determines the base OS and then uses it for the requirements as raised by various features, for ex. Dynamic Library extension, making sure that feature only executes when we are sure that we are inside Primate Apps folder only.

Color Coding - Coding Feature

As described by the Primate documentation, offloaded blue functional units as declared in the application code are color highlighted in the specific C++ documentation. Currently the support is offered for a single document as this is also what is supported by Primate application itself.

How to build apps for primate apps

The result from organizing a project, at the root of folder (where you installed primate) you will get a script called BUILD_APP_$NAME.sh which you can run directly and also create a VS-Code task for the same.

Requirements

As stated earlier, Primate Control Plugin can function itself without needing any new dependencies and if there are any, they are directly installed at the same time of installation of this plugin (technically after activation).

However, Primate have the following dependencies:

1. Package Manager like brew (MacOs), Cygwin (Windows), Apt-get (Unix)
2. Git
3. CMake
4. Ninja
5. GNU Make
6. C++ compiler like gcc, clang
7. Python 3
8. Scala
9. SBT - Scala Build Tool

Extension Settings

The following are the extension settings that are visible:

1. primate.throttleUpdateDecoration - Time in ms to wait for throttling of Updating Decorations of Blue Functional Units.
2. primate.colorDecoration - valid CSS Property to work on:
   1. color - string in #rgb
   2. backgroundColor - string in #rgb
   3. fontStyle
   4. border
   5. borderColor
   6. borderRadius
   7. borderSpacing
   8. borderStyle
   9. borderWidth
   10. cursor
   11. fontWeight
   12. letterSpacing
   13. opacity
   14. outline
   15. outlineColor
   16. outlineStyle
   17. outlineWidth
   18. textDecoration

Release Notes

See CHANGELOG.md

Release Schedule

The needed content for release schedule is dependent on the quality (Analysis of speed, cost of solution), new features provided, bugfixes and others, but mostly would be dependent on the Primate Framework itself.

Everytime there is an update to the main branch, we will release a vsix binary on our release page and will also be pushed to vscode marketplace automatically.

TODO

1. Add more test for source code.
2. Add security email (research group email).
3. Add DCO application on repository for github.
4. Delete Gitlab support before handoff.