Welcome on the gdtx project!
While developing games with Godot, I use GDScript, since it's the most recommended language, and it integrates really well in the game development workflow.
I was mostly using C# with Godot in the past, but performance problems on the Web target made me reconsider the language to use.
As I am also a professional Python developer (and a decent Rust developer), I want a great tooling experience around the language, which, for me, is:
- An opinionated automatic code formatter (like black for Python, or rustfmt for Rust)
- A sensible and extensible code linting tool (like flake8 for Python, or clippy for Rust)
Other features that could be great in this project are:
- Add the possibility to manage / download engine versions (already possible with my gdpm utility)
- Add scaffolding utilities to bootstrap a project using a template (or a built-in project with sensible defaults)
- Manage dependencies / addons (also somewhat possible with gdpm)
- Compatibility with the all new Godot engine 4.x
(I think I will merge gdpm in the gdtx project, but that's something for future me.)
One last thing, I want to do everything in Rust.
To do what I want, I need a GDScript parser and a "Godot project file" parser.
In the past, I tried to modify the Godot game engine a little so it could expose code lint capabilities through the command-line, but it was harder than I expected, and made me go back in time seeing C++ everywhere (I was a big fan before, in the C++11/14 era.).
So like in a "Compilers 101" course, I need to divide the work in two steps for each target language:
- The lexer: reads source code, emits "tokens"
- The parser: reads "tokens", emits nodes in an AST (Abstract Source Tree)
When that's done, I need two more steps:
- The formatter: use "tokens" from the lexer to write back code, but with enforced rules
- The linter: use everything available to emit warnings, tips and errors about the input code
Then, everything can be glued together in a command-line utility and tada 🎉!
To configure the tools, instead of using a specific configuration file, I will use the Godot project project.godot file (hence the lexer/parser/formatter).
I already did this in the gdpm project.
Based on what I just said in the previous section, the project will be a Cargo workspace with several crates:
gdtx: The main command-line utilitygdtx-gdscript-lexer: The GDScript lexer codegdtx-gdscript-linter: The GDScript linter codegdtx-gdscript-formatter: The GDScript formatter codegdtx-gdscript-parser: The GDScript parser codegdtx-gdproject-lexer: The "Godot project file" lexer codegdtx-gdproject-formatter: The "Godot project file" formatter codegdtx-gdproject-parser: The "Godot project file" parser code
That's a straightforward design, and there is work to do!
Here is a quick view of the project implementation state, by order of priority:
- GDScript
- GDScript Lexer (85%): Works great on my projects, code need to be more clearly written, capable of tokenizing a GDScript file of 77k lines in 1 second on my machine,
- GDScript Formatter (50%): Know how to write back tokens to code, when applying the tool on my code base (mostly all my projects in a folder), it writes back exactly the same code, so only the rules are missing,
- GDScript Parser (2%): Most of the work will be here, many things to do (and more things to do to improve the developer experience with nice error reports),
- GDScript Linter (0%): As it depends on the other crates, it's not even created yet 😄
- Godot project (0%): Not started yet.
So yep, mandatory warning:
If you like the project, do not hesitate to contribute by raising issues and opening Pull Requests ! 😄