Erlang for Visual Studio Code

👁 Visual Studio Marketplace
👁 Installs
👁 Build Status
👁 License

This extension adds support for the Erlang language to Visual Studio Code, including editing, building and debugging.

Editing support

• Syntax highlighting
• Automatic indentation
• Erlang IntelliSense
• Shows errors and warnings dynamically while you type
• Go To Definition/Peek Definition
• Hover help for standard functions
• Hover for project functions showing head clauses
• CodeLens showing exported functions and references
• InlayHints showing parameters name in function calls
  • disable by default : enable in configuration settings
  • limits : only works with locals calls

👁 editing

InlayHints in function calls

👁 inlayHints

• showing parameter name when it doesn't match with caller var name

Build

👁 build

• Standard rebar3 is the default build tool, also rebar is supported. The rebar.config file should be placed in the root directory.
• Build arguments are configurable, by default "compile" is used
• You can override the default in configuration file (i.e. workspace settings)

👁 build

Debugger

• Variables List shows variables from the current scope
• Call Stack shows Erlang processes and allows to control them with e.g. Pause and Continue
• Standard commands Step Over, Step Into, Step Out supported
• Full breakpoints support:
  • Regular breakpoints
  • Function Breakpoints: use format module:function/arity
  • Conditional Breakpoints
  • Hit-Count Breakpoints

👁 debug-inlinevalues

Running debugger

You can provide a specific command line to 'erl' in launch.json configuration file in "arguments" entry.

👁 debug1

The modified code may be automatically build before debugger is started. To set automatic build up you need to:

1. Add to launch.json file the entry "preLaunchTask": "rebar3 compile"
2. Select Configure Task in the alert, choose Create tasks.json file from template and then Others: Example to run an arbitrary command
3. This will create tasks.json for you. Change both label and command to "rebar3 compile".
4. Add entry "problemMatcher": "$erlang"

👁 debug

Then, before debugging is started, modified files will be recompiled automatically.

Using this extension in Erlang Docker instance

Clone this repo, and try it :

• vscode-remote-try-erlang

For more information about vscode and containers :

• setup vscode for containers and remote container documentation

Available commands

Support for Erlang tools, including rebar3, EUnit and Dialyzer

👁 commands

• Dialyzer warnings displayed in Problems tab for easy navigation

Settings

• erlang.erlangPath - Directory location of erl/escript
• erlang.erlangArgs - Arguments passed to Erlang backend
• erlang.erlangDistributedNode - Start the Erlang backend in a distributed Erlang node for extension development
• erlang.rebarPath - Directory location of rebar/rebar3
• erlang.rebarBuildArgs - Arguments to provide to rebar/rebar3 build command
• erlang.includePaths - Include paths are read from rebar.config, and also standard set of paths is used. This setting is for special cases when the default behaviour is not enough
• erlang.linting - Enable/disable dynamic validation of opened Erlang source files
• erlang.codeLensEnabled - Enable/Disable CodeLens
• erlang.cacheManagement - Specify where and how to store large cache tables
• erlang.inlayHintsEnabled - Enable/Disable InlayHints
• erlang.verbose - Activate technical traces for use in the extension development

Help

Some configuration tricks

Credits

File 'Erlang.tmLanguage' is inspired from https://github.com/textmate/erlang.tmbundle/blob/master/Syntaxes/Erlang.plist