solidity syntax highlighting for codemirror

[serapath]

@todo

• syntax highlighting solidity (code mirror 5 & code mirror 6 compatible)
  • for details check: google docs todo list
  • https://gitter.im/ethereum/play?at=5cbfe09c97dcb371d8031305

---

results:

• https://github.com/alincode/CodeMirror

resources:

• WIP Add NPM package for Solidity syntax highlighting. remix-ide#1415
• https://www.npmjs.com/package/ace-mode-solidity
• https://github.com/raphaelhuefner/ace-mode-solidity
• https://github.com/raphaelhuefner/ace-mode-solidity/blob/master/lib/ace/mode/solidity_highlight_rules.js
• https://github.com/raphaelhuefner/ace-mode-solidity/blob/master/lib/ace/mode/solidity.js
• https://www.raymondcamden.com/2018/06/18/my-first-stab-at-a-grammar-extension-for-vs-code

@raphaelhuefner

[serapath]

got some inspiration and wonder if it makes sense to have scope highlighting in solidity.
Don't know the exact scoping rules of solidity yet i have to say, but here is the link:

• https://github.com/daniellmb/JavaScript-Scope-Context-Coloring

[raphaelhuefner]

My opinion on scope highlighting:

In general, I agree that scope highlighting is more helpful than "just" syntax highlighting. (I certainly liked how Eclipse was more helpful by having a deeper understanding of the code, before I ditched it for being resource-heavy.)

I will keep scope highlighting in mind when porting the ACE Solidity highlighter over to CodeMirror, but I think it should be kept in it's own GitHub issue and should only be worked on after the syntax highlighting is done.

My first hunch is that scope highlighting could turn out to be resource intensive, that's why I would strongly suggest to make it configurable, i.e. allow the user to turn it off:

I believe that in order to get scope highlighting to work, we need to keep an AST representation of the source code around. (Your example uses JSLint, most likely for that.) I will try to research if there are any AST parsers which can deal with line-by-line changes, i.e. don't have to re-parse the whole file each time only one line got changed. CodeMirror's syntax highlighting works like that:

[...] CodeMirror needs to keep valid versions of a state around so that it can restart a parse at any line [...]

(source)

If it - against my gut feeling - turns out to be light on resources, then all the better.

[serapath]

sweet :-)

[serapath]

@raphaelhuefner did you already do something ragrding any porting of syntax highlighting?

you can see a rough preview of the editor embedded in a workshop here:

• https://ninabreznik.github.io/play-workshop-app/

Currently we just apply javascript syntax highlitghting and it kinda works because of solidity being slightly similar to javascript :-)

[raphaelhuefner]

@serapath Looks great! I'll get started with it in the next few days, but I doubt it will be ready before Christmas.

[alincode]

todo list:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xEGdDAK-2_dKgGZbkieaWAfOkNd-LYA07t3llkAmFYI/edit?usp=sharing

code:

https://github.com/alincode/CodeMirror

[alincode]

total item: 49
work on progress: 5
todo: 2

[alincode]

https://alincode.github.io/codemirror-solidity/
https://www.npmjs.com/package/codemirror-solidity

[mfix22]

@alincode is this about ready for beta-testing? If you publish a release without all the console.log's I can add it to Carbon for people to try it out, if that would help.

[alincode]

@mfix22 I removed all console.log, release at codemirror-solidity 0.1.4. 😀

[Pet3ris]

This is a cool effort - was this ever completed/if not are the outputs already usable, better than the javascript syntax highlighting?

[serapath]

Hey thx :-)
Yes it is done, but we haven't had the time to integrate it into our editor yet, because we don't have a lot of resources and it's not top priority.

If you want to make a pull request to add it in, check:

• https://alincode.github.io/codemirror-solidity/

The thing is the integration needs an afternoon of thinking and refactoring to keep things minimal and lean and we are quite busy with our p2p search engine and the editor currently works "well enough" ...but it's not forgotten and it's of course still on our roadmap :-)

[mfix22]

Hey @alincode codemirror-solidity is breaking in strict mode (see carbon-app/carbon#848). Wondering if you could take a look at this PR to solve it? Thanks! 👍

[alincode]

@mfix22 thanks for your feedback.

[alincode]

@mfix22 it releases at codemirror-solidity@0.2.0, check it.