VSCode's Remote Containers feature works very well with Dark. However, we need
to run things slightly differently to make it work. Instead of using
./scripts/builder to run the build, we run the build within the devcontainer.
Install the Remote Containers extension
Note that "Clone into container" does not work at the moment, so first clone the Dark repo locally.
Open the Dark directory, and when prompted to open it in a container, do so. The container will build, hopefully without problem.
When asked, install the suggested extensions as they are used to build Dark. We plan to automatically install the right extensions to build Dark, however right now we are missing the extensions for ReScript and OCaml.
You should see build output in the terminal, under the heading "Configuring".
This is also logged to rundir/logs/build-server.log
VSCode extensions are installed on a docker volume in the container, which caches them for the next time we need to restart the container. This means that new extensions added to devcontainer.json are not automatically built. If that's needed, you can delete the extensions volume with:
docker volume rm darklang-dark-extension-volume darklang-dark-extension-volume-insiders
Often, the F# plugin (Ionide) will fail to work. This can sometimes be solved by doing a full build of dotnet from the VSCode terminal and then restarting VSCode:
- open the terminal from within VSCode
- cd to
fsharp-backend - run
dotnet tool restore - run
dotnet paket restore - run
dotnet build - if this doesn't work, comment out the failing code until the build fully works, and repeat
dotnet build - from VSCode, run the command "Developer: Reload Window"
If that doesn't work, look in the "Output" tabs marked "msbuild" or "F#" for clues.
We are very interested in any issues you might have. First class support for VSCode is relatively new, but we probably use it more than any other editor. Please report any issues in Discord.