SwahiliPro for Visual Studio Code

The SwahiliPro extension is the primary desktop distribution for the SwahiliPro programming language.

A packaged Marketplace build includes the matching standalone swa runtime, so users can install the extension and immediately run .swa files without installing Python or pip.

The extension respects your existing VS Code appearance. It keeps your current color theme and file icon theme instead of asking you to switch themes. SwahiliPro's existing language representation icon is used for .swa language registration where the active icon theme allows language icons.

Install

Open Visual Studio Code.
Open Extensions with Ctrl+Shift+X.
Search for SwahiliPro.
Click Install.
Create or open a .swa file and press the Run button in the editor title bar.

The extension automatically adds its bundled runtime to the PATH used by new VS Code integrated terminals, so after installation you can open a new terminal and run:

swa --version

To make swa available from terminals outside VS Code as well, accept the one-time Enable CLI prompt or run SwahiliPro: Enable swa CLI in PATH from the Command Palette. The runtime is copied to a stable per-user directory at ~/.swahilipro/bin (or the equivalent user directory on Windows) and that directory is added to the user's PATH. Open a new terminal after enabling it.

What the extension provides

SwahiliPro v2 syntax highlighting.
.swa language registration.
Correct # comment behavior.
Brace/parenthesis/list auto-closing and indentation.
SwahiliPro: Run File command.
SwahiliPro: Open REPL command.
SwahiliPro: New File command.
SwahiliPro: Enable swa CLI in PATH command.
Automatic swa availability in new VS Code integrated terminals.
A bundled standalone swa runtime in packaged builds.

Example

jumlisha(a, b) => a + b

acha jina = "Amina"
acha umri = 18

ikiwa (umri >= 18) {
    andika("Habari " + jina)
}

andika(jumlisha(5, 10))

Running code

Open a .swa file and either:

click the Run button in the editor title bar, or
open the Command Palette and choose SwahiliPro: Run File.

The extension launches the bundled runtime as:

swa your-file.swa

For an interactive shell, use SwahiliPro: Open REPL, equivalent to:

swa

Development runtime override

Source checkouts do not commit generated native binaries. To test the extension against a locally built runtime, set:

swahilipro.runtimePath

to the absolute path of a standalone swa or swa.exe binary.

Packaging with a runtime

After building a standalone runtime from bonnieace/swahilipro-compiler, package a platform-specific VSIX with:

npm install
node scripts/package-with-runtime.js /path/to/swa win32-x64

Example targets include win32-x64, linux-x64, darwin-x64, and darwin-arm64. The packaging script injects the binary as runtime/swa or runtime/swa.exe, creates the VSIX, then removes the temporary generated binary from the source tree.

Runtime philosophy

The extension does not maintain a second implementation of SwahiliPro. It invokes the same standalone swa binary distributed as the CLI. This keeps the compiler, CLI and editor behavior on the same language version.

Support

Issues and suggestions can be reported in this repository.

SwahiliPro

masota