What's new in RokuCommunity: Jan-Apr 2024

Hey everyone,

Welcome to the Combined January-April 2024 edition of “What’s new in RokuCommunity”. Yeah, this one’s a bit late…

We’ve been very busy this year working on all the RokuCommunity projects so it’s been hard keeping up with these writeups. However, we do think they’re important so we’ve finally found some time to start catching up. Expect to see the writeups for May-July 2024 in the coming weeks, and hopefully we’ll be able to get back to a monthly cadence after that.

In order to keep this email to a reasonable size, I’ve limited the list of bullet points in the section below to the higher-priority changes. There are many more great features in each month’s writeup at rokucommunity.github.io that aren’t listed below, so we hope you can find the time to get caught up on them!

Here are the highlights from January 2024

• Editor

  • Always request screenshot on initial load, add ability to copy screenshot

  • Allow spacing on dotted get paths

• Debugging

  • Display a modal message when we fail to upload a package to the device

  • Add cli flag to run the debugger as standalone process for use in other editors

• BrighterScript

  • Prevent publishing of empty files

  • Assign .program to the builder BEFORE emitting afterProgramCreate event

  • Adds support for libpkg: prefix

  • Backport v1 syntax changes

  • Add plugin hooks for getDefinition

  • Fix parsing issues with multi-index IndexedSet and IndexedGet

• brs

  • Print leading space before positive numbers

  • Global functions GetInterface() and FindMemberFunction() now properly boxing parameters

• BrighterScript Preview features - there are a lot in here, so check them out if you’re keeping up with the BrighterScript v1 releases!

You can read the full January 2024 update here:
https://rokucommunity.github.io/whats-new/2024-01-January/

Here are the highlights from February 2024

• Debugging

  • Support relaunch debug protocol

  • DebugProtocol fixes

• BrighterScript

  • Allow Additional v1 Syntax:

  • Fix sourcemap comment and add file prop to map

  • Add support for provideReferences in plugins

  • Empty interfaces break the parser

• bslint

  • Support for latest BrighterScript alphas

• roku-deploy

  • Retry the convertToSquashfs request given the HPE_INVALID_CONSTANT error

• BrighterScript v1 - many improvements to type tracking, validation, and performance improvements

You can read the full February 2024 update here:
https://rokucommunity.github.io/whats-new/2024-02-February/

Here are the highlights from March 2024

• Editor

  • New Roku File System Panel

  • New Roku App Overlays Panel

  • Improvements to document symbols

  • Better stability during sideload

  • Fix crash when trying to copy numeric values to the clipboard

  • Fix conditional compile syntax highlighting

• Debugging

  • Optional Chainging Operator errors in debug console

• BrighterScript

  • Allow negative patterns in diagnostic filters

  • Prevent unused variable warnings on ternary and null coalescence expressions

  • Add plugin hook for documentSymbol and workspaceSybmol

  • Support when tokens have null ranges

  • BrighterScript null safety improvements (mostly for contributors)

• brs

  • Implemented roString methods startsWith() and endsWith()

  • Align Arithmetic Operator Modulo behavior to match Roku

  • Implemented component roList

• brighterscript-formatter

  • Add insertSpaceAfterConditionalCompileSymbol, fix conditional compile formatting

• BrighterScript v1 - more syntax improvements, stability fixes, breaking changes, etc.

You can read the full March 2024 update here:
https://rokucommunity.github.io/whats-new/2024-03-March/

Here are the highlights from April 2024

Editor

• Add new Delete button in File System view

• Add commands to rekey device and create packages

• Split panel scenegraph inspector

• Add support for opening SceneGraph Inspector in panel

• Add support for focusing a node in SceneGraph Inspector

roku-deploy

• roku-deploy v4 alphas

You can read the full April 2024 update here:
https://rokucommunity.github.io/whats-new/2024-04-April/