🐪 Perl IDE

A simple perl language server written in typescript, with a client that's also written in typescript. Intended to be used with vs code, but could be extended.

💡 Language Features

• 🔍 Syntax Checking
• 🔗 Go to Definition
• ✏️ Rename Symbol
• 📚 Autocomplete (without package import)
• 🧭 Find References
• 🖱️ Hover Info
• ✨ Semantic Highlighting
• 📘 Symbol Highlighting
• 🐞 Debugger

▶️ Perl Debugger

A modern Debugger Extension for Perl integrated with the Perl Language Server (PLS). This extension enables you to debug Perl scripts directly within VS Code using the built-in perl -d debugger interface.

⚠️ Windows support is not guaranteed. Tested on Linux and macOS.

✨ Features

• ✅ Set breakpoints in your Perl scripts
• ✅ Step Over, Step In, Step Out
• ✅ Continue execution
• ✅ View local variables
• ✅ Inspect package/global variables
• ✅ Evaluate watch expressions
• ✅ Stack trace visualization
• ✅ Integrated with the Perl Language Server

🚀 Getting Started

📦 Installation

1. Install the Extension from the VS Code Marketplace (or sideload your .vsix)
2. The first time when perl files are loaded, it might say "(Please wait) Indexing perl files", depending on the size of your project. This is a one time, the extension should create a function_map.json file under .vscode folder and use it as a cache next time it launches.

Feature: Syntax check

Feature: Goto Definition

Feature: Find all references

Feature: Search for function in workspace

Feature: Autocomplete (beta - without package imports)

Feature: Hover information

Feature: Rename symbol

Feature: Symbol information

Feature: 🐞 Using the debugger, launching perl script

Pre-requites

• Needs PadWalker to be installed for peeking variables in debugger.
• Refer https://perlmaven.com/padwalker

How to use the debugger

1. (Only for using debugger) Ensure you have Perl installed and accessible in your PATH:

   perl -v
   

2. Create or open a .pl file and goto next step or, additionally, configure your launch.json:

   {
       "type": "perl",
       "request": "launch",
       "name": "Launch current file",
       "program": "${file}",
       "stopOnEntry": false,
       "args": "",
       "env": {
           "LOL": 1
       }
   }
   

3. Hit F5 to start debugging,

⚙️ Extension Settings

This extension contributes the following settings:

• perl.maxNumberOfProblems: Controls the maximum number of problems produced by the server.

🧪 Known Limitations

• ⚠️ Webassembly.Memory(): could not allocate memory

  • Its a problem with your node runtime, either upgrade your nodejs
  • Or, check out your ulimit. Further reading - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52406217/why-cant-i-construct-webassembly-memory-in-browsers

• ❌ Windows compatibility is experimental

• ⚠️ Advanced data structure rendering (e.g. y @vars) is string-parsed, may have edge cases

📦 Release Notes

🟢 3.0.0

• Feature release, with a working debugger.
• check changelog for more details.

🟢 2.0.0 — Alpha Release

• alpha release, with usable features.

🟡 0.0.1

• Very beta, testing out the integration

🔘 0.1.0

• Somewhat beta, will work my way up to release further stable releases

TODO

kill process properly on exit fix stop on entry fix logs - assert fields needs to come