PennMUSH Softcode Tools is a Visual Studio Code extension that brings modern editing features to PennMUSH softcode. Whether you are maintaining a legacy database or building a brand-new MUSH from scratch, this extension turns VS Code into a fully-fledged PennMUSH IDE—complete with syntax highlighting, IntelliSense-style completions, inline diagnostics and a one-click code formatter.
Features
Screenshot
Description
Rich syntax highlighting for commands, attributes, flags, built-in functions and inline colour codes.
Context-aware completions for the top 15 PennMUSH functions and common softcode commands, driven by snippets so you can tab through parameters.
Signature Help that shows parameter hints for every builtin PennMUSH function as you type, including optional arguments and default values.
Live diagnostics for unterminated brackets, unknown functions/attributes and arity (argument-count) errors, with quick-fixes where applicable.
Prettify Softcode command (⇧⌘P → PennMUSH: Prettify Softcode) that wraps long attribute values at %R, keeps %B/%T inline when sensible, and neatly indents nested functions.
Requirements
Dependency
Minimum Version
Purpose
Visual Studio Code
v1.99 or higher
Brings tree-sitter engines required for incremental parsing.
Node.js
v16 LTS (only for local builds)
Needed if you compile the extension from source. Users who install via the Marketplace do not require Node.
No additional PennMUSH installation is needed—the extension is entirely self-contained.
Extension Settings
Setting
Description
Default
pennmush.enableDiagnostics
Toggle real-time linting.
true
pennmush.prettify.lineLength
Maximum line length before the formatter inserts a %R.
80
pennmush.completions.topFunctionCount
Number of high-frequency functions exposed in completions.
15
pennmush.diagnostics.unknownAttributeSeverity
Severity of “unknown attribute” warnings (error, warning, info, hint).
warning
Settings are declared under contributes.configuration and are fully discoverable via VS Code’s GUI (File → Preferences → Settings → Extensions → PennMUSH).
Known Issues
Nested functions with deeply imbalanced brackets may still yield false positives in the arity checker.
Files larger than ~5 MB may experience sluggish formatting on lower-spec machines.
The formatter does not currently respect user-defined wrapper strings other than %R, %B and %T.
Please log bugs or suggestions on the GitHub issues page before raising duplicates.
Contributing & Licence
Contributions are welcome—fork the repo, create a feature branch and open a pull request. The project is released under the MIT Licence; see LICENCE for details.
