posit-dev / posit-dev/positron

Export custom comm message types and structure in Positron API

Open
#265 4 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

area: core
Dominant language
TypeScript
Stars
4.3k
Forks
184
Avg merge
1d 11h
Merged PRs (30d)
206

Description

Positron contains a number of custom communication channels, each of which defines its own protocol for frontend/backend communication. These generally represent UI elements, such as the Environment pane, a plot, a data viewer instance, etc.

For example, Environment pane exchanges messages with its back-end counterpart using strongly typed data structures, which currently live here:

https://github.com/rstudio/positron/blob/main/src/vs/workbench/services/languageRuntime/common/languageRuntimeEnvironmentClient.ts

While this is an appropriate source of truth for the data structures while they are evolving rapidly, at some point we need to define the protocol for each comm such that third parties can implement their own backends for these UI elements. That probably means that they need to be represented in positron.d.ts in some way.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reading src/vs/workbench/services/languageRuntime/common/languageRuntimeEnvironmentClient.ts and then inspect positron.d.ts. Identify how the custom communication protocols are currently represented and define what must be exported so third parties can implement backend counterparts for the UI elements.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
typescript
Domain
api
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.