Rascal Metaprogramming Language and Language Workbench

Rascal MPL is a programming language specifically designed to analyze and manipulate code in any data format or programming language. This means code generation, code analysis, code visualization, anything that you can do to code and with code, Rascal is designed to make it easy.

In particular the creation of IDEs for new Programming Languages and Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) is easy with Rascal. The Rascal VScode extension is a so-called Language Workbench.

Have a look here for more information:

• http://www.rascal-mpl.org
• http://www.usethesource.io

Features

• R-LSP: IDE features for the Rascal metaprogramming language (parsing, syntax highlighting, type-checking, REPL terminal)
• P-LSP: "language parameterized" LSP server for languages expressed in Rascal. From a syntax definition you can start running your own LSP in vscode in a few steps.
• Rascal terminal: highly integrated terminal REPL that allows you to:
  • script and experiment with ad-hoc code analyses and visualizations
  • register new DSLs with VSCode using the P-LSP
  • experiment and test new DSL features

The Rascal VScode extension currently is bundled with the following libraries:

• Rascal standard library
• Rascal-LSP LanguageServer library
• Java analysis library based on Eclipse JDT

Requirements

• Installed JDK 11
• However, the extension will propose to download the right JDK for you if you do not have it yet.

Extension Settings

No settings so far.

Known Issues

This extension is stabilizing, some stuff is still a bit slow, but people are using it in their production development environments. Your constructive feedback is much appreciated at https://github.com/usethesource/rascal-language-servers/issues.

This extension works best with Java 11; but running it on Java 17 reportedly works as well

The Rascal type-checker now has a new binary backward compatibility feature, such that .tpl files remain usable in many more situations. Also the type-checker detects and reports possible .tpl file incompatibility from now on. Typically, the previous versions of .tpl files are not compatible with the new ones, so to avoid spurious errors you must remove all pre-existing .tpl files after upgrading. Use mvn clean, for example. Or remove your target or bin folder in every Rascal project. This backwards compatiblitiy functionality is available since rascal 0.40.17, typepal 0.14.8, rascal-maven-plugin 0.28.9, and Rascal VS Code 0.12.0.

For other things we are working on have a look here:

• https://github.com/usethesource/rascal-language-servers/issues ; on the current extension
• https://github.com/usethesource/rascal/issues ; on the Rascal language independent of the IDE

Release Notes

0.12.2

• Debug and Debug side bar got a new view that lists active REPLs and allows the user to start a debugging session for it
• Bugfixes:
  • Type checker was to eager in reporting binary incompatiblities
  • Improved the performance of rename on large rascal files

0.12.1

• The type-checker got a lot faster, especially if you're editing a single file in a larger project.
• Various bugfixes in:
  • The rename functionality
  • The code actions
  • The type-checker

0.12.0

• New feature: The "Rename Symbol" command (default: F2) is now supported for all identifiers in Rascal modules. Renaming is safe, so the semantics of Rascal code before/after renaming is the same.
• New feature: Code Actions (default: CTRL+.) are now supported in Rascal modules to analyze and transform code (e.g.: visualization of import graphs; simplification of functions). Code Actions can also be defined for DSLs.
• New feature: Keywords, numbers, strings (single-line), regular expressions, comments, and tags are now highlighted in Rascal modules even in the presence of parse errors. This feature uses a TextMate grammar for Rascal, generated using rascal-textmate.
• Upgrade to a greatly improved version of the Rascal type checker, including:
  • Backward-compatibility between different versions of libraries. After this upgrade, you won't have to keep all your dependencies aligned with the latest released Rascal version. We think we have developed a scheme that should work for all future upgrades, but there might be a few bumps in the road the coming releases.
  • Better type checking errors (roughly 3 years of bugfixes)
  • Increased performance for partial type checks
  • Deprecation warnings for deprecated functions
• Upgrade to Rascal 0.40.17, including (see also its release notes):
  • A new mvn scheme for referencing jars in the maven repository
  • Improvements to json/xml/html deserialization, including better origin tracking
  • A new REPL progress bar that you can also use via util::Monitor
  • Improvements to our support for defining pretty printing
  • Clipboard control from Rascal code
  • Upgraded the Java support in m3
  • Various bugfixes
• For DSL extension developers:
  • The present release is updated to work with Node.js 18. The next release will be updated to work with Node.js 20, to align with the VS Code engine and our dependencies.
  • Changes to module util::LanguageServer:
    • Code Actions can be defined using constructor action of type CodeAction, and registered using constructor codeAction of type LanguageService.
    • Code Actions can also be attached to info, warning, and error messages as Quick Fixes.
    • Constructors in type LanguageService are renamed to align them with the corresponding requests in LSP. Usage of the old names is now deprecated.
    • Keyword parameter useSpecialCaseHighlighting is introduced on constructor parsing of type LanguageService (default: true). It is used to control whether or not the semantic highlighter should apply an odd special case (i.e., categories of syntax non-terminals are sometimes ignored); the semantic highlighter has been applying this special case for several releases. Usage of the special case is now deprecated.
    • Constructor codeLens of type LanguageService has a function parameter with return type lrel instead of rel as before. This is to ensure that multiple code lenses for a single line are always ordered in the same way. Usage of return type rel for this function parameter is now deprecated.
    • Type Focus is introduced. It is used to declare the parameters of on-demand services (hover, definition, referenes, implementation) instead of loc-Tree-Tree triples as before. Unlike such triples, a value of type Focus provides the full context (list of subtrees) of the cursor position. Usage of the triples is now deprecated.
  • For each deprecated item:
    • In the present release, support is retained for backward-compatibility, but existing code should be updated.
    • In a future release, support will be removed, and existing code must be updated. (In the case of keyword parameter useSpecialCaseHighlighting, the default will first become false before it is removed.)
• Other improvements:
  • New feature: When the Rascal LSP server crashes, VS Code will now report the crash in a notification, including a button to open a GitHub issue.
  • New feature: The default names of Rascal terminals can now be configured via setting Rascal > Terminal > Name: Origin Format.
  • New feature: Project setups are now checked for common errors.
  • Fixed "Start Rascal Terminal and Import this module" command

0.11.2

• bumping to rascal 0.34.2:
  • improved heuristic of json mapping for an empty map
  • fixed bugs related to grammar fusing for modules with extends & imports

0.11.1

• bugfix for syntax highlighting categories

0.11.0

• there is a new "Rascal Configuration" view that shows the resolved dependencies per project xml, and allows you to browse the rascal sources inside of those.
• the summarizer contribution for DSLs has been replaced by analyzer and builder. Please review your language setup and migrate to builders (only on save), and analyzer (every change in the IDE). We have tried to keep the behavior as close to the original summarizer, but it will not be triggered on-demand anymore.
• small improvements:
  • DSLs can now register multiple extensions for a single language
  • we check for common rascal project setup errors when starting a new REPL
  • automatic reloading of changes now also works for cross-project dependencies
  • We have a new and improved version of the rascal logo
  • downstream dependencies were updated to the latest version

0.10.2

• upgrading to rascal 0.34.1 to fix a regression in concrete syntax
• the REPL is marked as non-transient, until we can properly reconnect it after a reload of the window

0.10.1

• bugfix for preloaded parsers

0.10.0

• the automatic JVM downloader will now prompt you for updates if they are available
• Every REPL now gets named after the project they are connected to
• For deployed DSL extensions (via the npm published version of this plugin) we have a temporary interface to supply a preloaded parser
• We now automatically run our pre-release test on every PR/commit via VS Code extension tester
• upgraded to rascal 0.34.0:
  • various performance improvements that improve import time and memory pressure
  • removal of some unused resolvers (benchmark/testdata/test-modules/boot)
  • various small bug fixes
• bug fixes:
  • fixed a bug where changes in a pom.xml would only be visible after a VS Code restart. Now it only takes a restart of the REPL. (or re-trigger the type checker)
  • fixed a bug where we would register schema's that were already registered (zip error message in the debug console)

0.9.1

• Bugfix for working directory of REPLs

0.9.0

• Webviews opened from Rascal can now have a title and view column
• There is now a setting to influence how much memory a REPL gets allocated (rascal.interpreter.maxHeapSize & rascal.interpreter.stackSize).
• The Rascal REPL now has a icon (it requires a bugfix in vscode 1.80 to correctly show)
• upgraded to rascal 0.33.7:
  • Better support for ModuleParserStorage
  • Changes to support the new webview capabilities
  • Various bugfixes
• This release includes an "easter egg"; an experimental debugger for Rascal which is currently under test.

0.8.3

• upgraded to rascal 0.33.5:
  • Fixed a second bug aroung ModuleParserStorage
  • Preparing for debugger API

0.8.2

• Upgraded to rascal 0.33.3:
  • Fixed a bug around ModuleParserStorage (see lang::rascal::grammar::storage::ModuleParserStorage)
  • Bugfixes with the lib resolver
  • New feature: IO::findResources that replaces some functionality that people used the lib:// scheme for.

0.8.1

• Bugfix release for regression in typechecker introduced in v0.8.0

0.8.0

• This release comes with rascal 0.32.0 which features:
  • In ParseTree, storeParsers and loadParsers offer a way to skip loading and executing a parser generator after deployment. Parsers can be stored in an opaque binary format that is very quickly loaded again and wrapped as a Rascal function with the same interface as what the parsers function generates.
  • The interpreter uses ModuleName.parsers to parse modules with concrete syntax for every module file ModuleName.rsc that is in the same jar file.
  • 8 to 12% improvement in generated parser efficiency
  • several issues with respect to URI syntax resolved
  • fixes for #1805, #1804 and #1793; related to the consistency of the documentation (broken links and broken code examples)
  • M3 now has a default implicitDeclarations set which programming languages can fill with entities that are defined by language but do not have a source position anywhere (not even in the standard library).
  • M3 now has "specifications" (read test functions) that check what it means for a typical abstract syntax tree to be correct and how correct M3 relations relate to one another. For example, in an M3 model something should not be used if it is not declared, unless there are compilation errors.
  • Project names in the project:// scheme are now always to be lowercase letters, hyphens (-) or underscores (_), as in |project://my-project-name/src/main/rascal|
• This release is based on rascal-maven-plugin 0.19.2 and rascal-tutor 0.11.4, which come with:
  • API functions now have their signature first, before the other documentation sections are printed
  • API modules have a link to their github source pages
  • All packages must report their FUNDING sources now
  • All packages must report their CITATION preferences now
  • All packages must report their LICENSE now
  • All packages automatically report their dependencies now as sourced from pom.xml
  • All code examples, if tagged with error, must also throw an error.
  • Fixed all code examples that were falsely tagged with error
• Finally, these are the changes local to the rascal-language-servers and rascal-lsp projects:
  • PR #262 fixed three important issues with the LSP server interactions that had effect on the quality of the hover help and the references feature. In particular when more source files were involved (e.g. in the Rascal case) sometimes seemingly random results are shown, or none. This fix removes the root cause of the confusion and also rationalizes some code around the mapping from cursor locations to locations in the summaries.
  • util::LanguageServer is now minimally documented and will appear on rascal-mpl.shortly in the Packages section under the rascal-mpl package.
  • Checks in RASCAL.MF files have been extended and improved.
  • Loading of classes from dependent projects has improved in the VScode terminal and the language-parametrized LSP; there was a bug which caused arbitrary jar files to be loaded instead of the ones declared in the pom.xml. Usually the last dependency in the pom file "won". This also means that lib://myDependency would sometimes implicitly resolve to lib://myLaterDependency and throw IO exceptions and exists tests set to false.

0.7.0

• Fixes issues with IDEServices::registerDiagnostics where only the first error would be registered.
• Fixes issue with Rascal library loading where Rascal source files where loaded in a different order from the path than their accompanied .class files.
• util::Reflective::newRascalProject now guarantees syntax regex for project folders and project names.
• XML, HTML and JSON parsers now provide source origin location with every node.
• Improved support for Windows PATHs in dependency resolution code of Rascal
• Fixed UTF8 encoding issue in the Lucene library
• Documentation improvements
• Several minor issues.
• Added more validation features for RASCAL.MF files.

0.6.3

• bugfix for writes to VS Code virtual file systems initiated from rascal (only first 8KB of the write was correctly transferred)

0.6.2

• Bugfix for RASCAL.MF validator (#225)

0.6.1

• bumped rascal to 0.28.3 for performance fixes around maven and various bugfixes
• typechecking with latest 0.14.6 version of rascal-maven-plugin (and using linked rascal-library) to avoid outdated typepal files
• now allowing jdk 17 as runtime, we'll still install 11 as default, but jdk 17 seems to work.
• Bugfix for automatic jdk downloader on aarch64 osx (Apple M1 for example)
• RASCAL.MF files are now checked for common errors and incorrect configurations

0.6.0

• bumped rascal to 0.28.0 for the addition of vis::Graphs and fixes in util::Sampling and vis::Charts.
• fixed issues with the IDEServices::edit function, in the VScode terminal context and VScode parameterized DSL LSP server context, with logical locations and locations with line/column information (both previously unsupported), for use in interactive visualizations (for example).
• allow vscode extensions to use rascal-vscode independently of installed rascal; this means DSL implementations can run their own native extension when they are finished being developed.
• as a result, rascal-vscode is now also an independent npm package.

0.5.6

• fixes issue which was caused by an issue in the rascal project.
• bumped rascal to 0.27.3 for the above fix.

0.5.5

This release is about including a new version of the rascal project, 0.27.2:

• fixes issue with variable scope leakages for optimized visit statements
• adds util::Validator for validating complex untyped hierarchical structures (such as obtained from XML, JSON or YAML)
• added vis::Charts for eight basic chart types
• redesign of lang::json::IO with more natural mapping to JSON objects, but more precarious constraints for mapping back. See util::Validator for bridging the new gap if you have a complex ADT with lots of overloading and many constructors per type. The default mapping only supports simple enums and single constructors per ADT.

0.5.4

• fixes an issue with unsetRec issue.

0.5.2

• fixed efficiency issue in use of the project:/// scheme for browsing file hierarchies, like for example in getASTs function for Java.
• new logo

0.5.1

• upgraded to latest version of rascal (0.26.2) to fix an issue that become more present with the multiple evaluators feature

0.5.0

• Now using rascal 0.24.7
• Rascal DSLs can now use multiple evaluators if they want (see discussion in #181)
• Rascal DSLs do not get typepal on the PathConfig/evaluator search path by default. Only rascal & rascal-lsp.
• unregisterLanguage was added to clear all or parts of a language
• Rascal REPLs get a progressbar while starting. This provides more feedback that something is happening, especially until the performance regression on windows is fixed.

0.4.0

• Now using rascal 0.24.6
• Better support pom.xml dependency resolution
• Rascal LSP commands can return values that are available in typescript
• Bugfix for handling def/ref/hover request in the "start" region of a rascal parse tree
• Moved to LSP 3.17 using the native inlayHint implementation
• Updated java & node dependencies to latest releases
• Improved performance of DSL init (specifically the time spent on generating parsers)

0.3.0

• Rascal DSLs get more flexibility (and performance) in how they contribute the information back to VS Code. Summaries work as base, but developers can defined custom functions for specific requests from VS Code.
• Rascal DSLs can parse without waiting for other request to finish
• Now using Rascal 0.24.2

0.2.4

• reduced frequency of summary calls for DSLs

0.2.3

• updated typepal dependency to reduce debug prints

0.2.2

• Virtual file systems of VSCode are now available in rascal
• Bumped dependencies of java and nodejs
• rascal version bumped to 0.23.2
• Improved REPL integration for browsing and editing files from the command line

0.2.1

• Version bump of rascal dependency from 0.23.0 to 0.23.1, which makes browsing the standard libraries possible due to fixing an incompatible type file format.
• Version bump of rascal dependencies from 0.22.1 to 0.23.0; this includes bugfixes around prefix matching with concrete syntax trees and the use of the private modifier (if one alternative is private, they are now all private).
• Version bumps for typepal and rascal-core with improved typechecking efficiency.
• Better error reporting for the Rascal LSP server and the parameterized LSP server.
• Fixes around status progress bars.
• Fix for packaging of rascal-lsp jar (which helped remove spurious type-checking errors in clients of the LanguageServer library modules)

0.2.0

• Moved to Java 11
• Upgrade to newer Rascal type-checker
• Early support for cross-project rascal dependencies for both REPL & type-checker
• Rascal features work even without a project open (opening a single rascal file for example)
• Improved status bar messages for DSLs and making sure to always clear finished tasked
• Increases performance of project source location operations
• Automatic java detection ignores JREs
• Fixed bug that prevented detection of new projects added to the workspace

0.1.7

• Security release, bumping log4j dependency

0.1.6

• Rascal is now properly reporting progress
• Parametric DSLs can defined inlayHints to annotate a source tree

0.1.5

• Rascal LSP server now starts lazily to reduce memory overhead.
• Parametric LSP server now starts lazily to reduce memory overhead.
• Fixed missing print of Rascal version in the REPL.
• Added print of Rascal-lsp version in the REPL.
• Added automatic JDK download if none is available.
• Added registerLanguage to public extension API.

0.1.4

• Improved semantic tokenization and highlighting for Rascal and DSLs. Tokenization has been refined to allow differential coloring of nested nonterminals.
• Added folding regions for Rascal based on its grammar.
• Added folding regions for DSLs based on the grammar.
• Fixed REPL autoreloading for changed files.

0.1.3

• Bugfixes for the features below.

0.1.2

• Bugfixes for the features below

0.1.1

• Added feature to publish diagnostics while scripting code analyses in the terminal (uses util::IDEServices)
• Added feature of clickable logical URI's, like "|java+class://java/util/List|" in the terminal such that they resolve to the code location of the declared entity.

0.1.0

• Added features for progress reporting from both the R-LSP and the P-LSP
• Added applyEdits functionality from the terminal and the P-LSP
• Added code lenses for the P-LSP
• Fixed a number of synchronization issues

0.0.3

• Fixed bug that disabled the IDE generator functionality.

0.0.2

• Updated this Readme

0.0.1

• Initial release of rudimentary support for the Rascal language
• A terminal REPL for Rascal
• A parametrized LSP that can be configured directly from the Rascal REPL using registerLanguage

LICENSE

Rascal and this extension are licensed under the BSD2 open-source license. Some files and libraries are licensed with the Eclipse Licence v2. See LICENSE