Use PascalABC.NET without the IDE

Среда PascalABC.NET
#1

I used to see someone mention a language server for PascalABC.NET, but I can’t find the link anymore. Is there any new progress? I would like to test this language server with my favorite code editor.

#2

There was WDE, but it was barely used, and was crashing all the time. I think a few years have passed since it was taken down.

That’s probably what you heard about. But WDE was not PascalABC.NET without IDE (Integrated Development Enviroment) - it was just a Web IDE.

If you need the compiler (the thing that makes binaries from source code) - you have 2 files in the install directory (in program files x86 by default):

  • pabcnetc.exe: A console compiler with rich interface, but hard to automate.
  • pabcnetcclear.exe: A console compiler with minimal interface, mainly exists for automation.

Now, compiler is not enough for a language server - programming without code analyser (Intellisense) is pretty painful.
There is not current implementation for language server protocol. You’d need to use .dll-s in the install directory and create your own tree visitor implementation for an interface in those .dll-s. Probably easier to do this by forking the source code and adding a new project.

There is also an SDK, which is a wrapper of the compiler for dotnet/msbuild tools. But again, it’s just the compiler, with not code analysers.
The devs of this SDK seem more torrelant towards programming without any code analyser than me, so they also talked about using this SDK to integrate with IDEs.
But I haven’t heard any progress in a while - possibly because I wasn’t actively trying to keep up with that.