Blade for Visual Studio Code

First-party Visual Studio Code support for the Blade build system.

中文说明 · Documentation

Install: Visual Studio Marketplace · or run code --install-extension blade-build.vscode-blade

Demo

Jump to a target and its BUILD declaration, then build, test, and debug it — without leaving the editor:

Features

• Targets explorer — every target in the workspace, laid out as a directory tree with inline build / run / test / debug actions. Hover a directory (or the // root) to build / test it recursively (//path/...). Expand / collapse state is remembered across sessions; synthetic external libraries (#pthread, …) are hidden.
• Build, run, test, clean from the status bar, the command palette, or the explorer — executed through the VS Code Tasks API, so compiler errors land in the Problems panel and a failed build never silently runs a stale binary. Pass extra flags per action with blade.buildArgs / testArgs / runArgs.
• Build profile — a release / debug selector in the targets view title injects -p <profile> into every build / run / test / debug (default release, remembered per workspace).
• Multi-root — every BLADE_ROOT in the window is discovered and shown as its own top-level node; targets, tasks, navigation and diagnostics are each routed to the workspace that owns them.
• BUILD-file language support — syntax highlighting, an outline of targets, go-to-definition on dependency labels (//path:name, :name), completion of rule types / attributes / dependency labels, hover, and warnings for dependencies that don't resolve to a known target.
• C/C++ IntelliSense — one click generates compile_commands.json (blade dump --compdb) for use with clangd.

Targets are always read from Blade itself (blade dump --targets), never by scraping BUILD files — so every rule kind (C++, Java, Scala, Python, proto, …) is understood accurately.

Requirements

• Blade installed and on your PATH (or set blade.executable).
• A workspace containing a BLADE_ROOT file.

Getting started

1. Open a Blade workspace (a folder with a BLADE_ROOT).
2. The Blade view appears in the Activity Bar with your targets.
3. Pick an active target from the status bar, then Build / Run / Test.
4. Run Blade: Generate compile_commands.json and install clangd for C/C++ IntelliSense.

Settings

Setting	Default	Description
blade.executable	blade	Path to the blade executable.
blade.jobs	0	Parallel jobs (-j); 0 lets blade auto-detect CPUs.
blade.commandPrefix	[]	Tokens prepended to every blade command (e.g. a wrapper).
blade.buildArgs	[]	Extra options for blade build (e.g. ["-p", "debug"]).
blade.testArgs	[]	Extra options for blade test (e.g. ["--full-test"]).
blade.runArgs	[]	Extra options for blade run (e.g. ["-p", "release"]).
blade.environment	{}	Extra environment variables for blade tasks.
blade.generateCompdbOnRefresh	true	Regenerate compile_commands.json on refresh.
blade.recommendClangd	true	Suggest installing clangd for C/C++ IntelliSense.

Commands

Blade: Refresh Targets, Select Active Target, Build / Run / Test Active Target, Clean, Generate compile_commands.json.

Acknowledgements

Inspired by, and superseding, the community extension dhwang.blade by @wangdh15 (MIT). This is a clean-room reimplementation; see NOTICE.

License

MIT