Visual Studio Code Support for Lime/OpenFL

With the Lime extension for Visual Studio Code, developers can open Haxe projects that use the Lime and OpenFL libraries. You'll get code completion and inline documentation, a fully populated Haxe dependency tree, and the ability to run tasks to build, clean, and test your projects.

You can also use this extension to develop projects that depend on popula OpenFL libraries, including HaxeFlixel, Starling and Away3D.

The Lime extension integrates directly with the official Haxe extension, and Haxe 3.4.2 or greater is required (but Haxe 4.0 or newer is recommended). Be sure to install Lime from Haxelib and run the haxelib run lime setup command to configure it.

Opening a folder that contains a project.xml, project.hxp or project.lime file activates this extension. Optionally, you can set "lime.projectFile" in the workspace .vscode/settings.json file in order to specify a different file path. When activated, this extension adds support for changing the target platform, the build configuration, as well as additional command-line arguments.

About Lime

Lime is a flexible, cross-platform framework for native desktop, mobile and console development, including support for cross-platform technologies like HTML5, WebAssembly, Electron, HashLink, and Adobe AIR.

OpenFL is a library for creative expression that reimplements the display list, event system, audio and video playback, enhanced GPU support with Stage 3D, and more from Adobe Flash Player and AIR. OpenFL is built on Lime, which means that it can reach platforms everywhere.

To learn more about Lime and OpenFL, visit https://www.openfl.org.

Feedback

For questions, comments or concerns, please visit the forums at https://community.openfl.org

Using the extension

Open a folder that contains a Lime project file named project.xml, project.hxp or project.lime, and the extension should become active.

The lower-left part of the window should include status bar items for the current build target (such as HTML5, Windows, Mac, or Linux), configuration (Release, Debug or Final) as well as an item that allows you to specify additional flags or defines.

You can change them by clicking, and selecting a new option in the pop-up. Code completion should be working automatically, but may require a update or build task to be run first.

You should be able to use Ctrl+Shift+B (Cmd+Shift+B on Mac) to access the lime build task. There is also a "Run Test" command you can use, but it has no keyboard shortcut. One option would be to set "Run Test Task" in keyboard shortcuts to Ctrl+Enter (Cmd+Enter) for accessing lime test quickly.

Using Development Builds

Install Visual Studio Code

Go to https://code.visualstudio.com/download and install.

Disable auto-updates

Open Visual Studio Code, then go to "Preferences" > "Settings". This will open a text editor.

In the window, add the following value:

"extensions.autoUpdate": false

This will prevent an auto-update mechanism that will install a release version of vshaxe and lime-vscode-extension, breaking the development version.

Install and build this extension

In the "extensions" directory:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/openfl/lime-vscode-extension
cd lime-vscode-extension
npm install

Build the extension

If you do not want to debug the extension, you should build it at least once:

cd lime-vscode-extension
npm run build -s

Development workflow

Otherwise, you can open the "lime-vscode-extension" directory using Visual Studio Code. This enables a development workflow, where you can use Ctrl+Shift+B (Cmd+Shift+B on Mac) to recompile the extension.

Hit F5 to begin debugging. This opens a second Visual Studio Code window with the extension enabled. Errors, log output and other data will be reported back to the "Debug Console" in the first window.