Developing NWX with VSCode

Once you’ve got the build working you’re ready to start developing. The following subsections provide some basic advice on how to go about doing common development tasks.

Version Control

It’s strongly recommended that you do your development on a new branch and not on “master” (the bottom toolbar should show your current branch next to the version control icon, three circles in a V-like pattern). Clicking on the branch name will bring up a menu where you can select “Create new branch” to create your new branch (clicking “Create new branch” will lead to a new menu where you name the branch).

More version control options are available in the left toolbar by clicking on the version control symbol. Here you will see a list of uncommitted changes for each repo in your workspace. You can click on a change to see the difference. Next to the file you also will see buttons for opening the file, reverting the file, and staging the file. Next to the branch name is a checkmark which can be used to quickly stage and commit all changed files (you’ll have to type a commit message in the provided box). Finally For the ellipses (three dots) will bring up a menu with common git commands like push and pull.

Code Formatting

C++

Todo!

Python

VSCode can use yapf to automatically format Python code through the official Microsoft Python extension.

Install yapf by running:

# Highly recommended, but optional virtual environment
$ python -m venv venv
$ . venv/bin/activate

# Install yapf
$ pip install yapf

Set the python.formatting.provider setting in VSCode to “yapf”.

Note

More information on VSCode Python formatting can be found here.

Documentation

C++ (Doxygen)

Todo!

Python (Docstrings)

Sphinx-style docstrings can be autogenerated for fully-defined functions/classes in VSCode using the Python Docstring extension. Once the extension is installed, set the autoDocstring.docstringFormat setting to “sphinx” to match current NWX team Python Coding Conventions.

Note

Further information can be found here.

Debugging

Debugging is one of the main reasons to use an IDE. To debug an executable, click on the play-arrow with a bug on it in the left toolbar. If you have no debug configurations set up yet there will be a big “Run and Debug” button Click on it. This will bring up a menu asking you about the type of C++ debugger you want to use. Pick the appropriate one (probably GDB/LLVM). Next, it’ll ask you which configuration you want to use. This will generate a JSON with your debug configuration and open it in an editor. For most purposes the only thing we need to change is the value associated with the “program” key; change this to the path for the executable you want to debug (note you can use ${workspaceFolder} to get an absolute path to the top-level directory of your current folder).

Clicking the green play arrow in the top toolbar will start a debugging session for the current selected configuration (use the drop down menu next to the arrow to select the configuration). The run will automatically stop on any signal (such as segfault). It also will automatically stop when it hits a breakpoint (you can set a breakpoint by clicking to the left of the line number you want to break on). When the program stops the debugging pane will show the values of the current variables and the current stack. You can use the toolbar at the top-center to respectively: resume/pause execution, go to the next line in the current source file, enter the function on the current line, go up one call in the stack, restart execution, or stop execution.

Profiling

TODO: Write Me!!!!