New Tool: Add Cadence support for IntelliJ Platform - Milestone 2-3-4

[NikitasKotsolakos]

New Tool: Add Cadence support for IntelliJ Platform - Milestone 2-3-4

Description

This PR is for issue #19

• The Intellij platform plugin (which was developed for Milestone 1, onflow/flip-fest#70), has been updated to provide semantic analysis and error checking through LSP support since it's version 0.4 (Milestone 2). To do this, it utilizes the cadence Language Server Protocol server provided by the flow-cli, and the lsp4intellij library.
• The plugin is compatible not only with Intellij, but with all Intellij platform IDEs, including GoLand, WebStorm, PyCharm, PhpStorm etc (version 2021.2.2 and later). (Milestone 3)
• The plugin is published on the official JetBrains marketplace, and is available for download simply by searching in all the supported IDEs. (Milestone 4)
• The plugin contains settings which allow configuring the LSP support, and allow debug logging for developing purposes.
• The documentation has been updated to explain the requirements (flow-cli) and configuration of the LSP support.

• The plugin is suggested by Intelij when it detects .cdc files, and has already over 50 unique downloads

  • Thus, this MR covers all the requirements of milestones 2, 3 and 4. (Requirements of milestone 1 have already been covered before in the accepted Milestone 1 MR)

Submission Links & Documents

• The source code of the plugin can be found on the public (GPLv3) repository: https://github.com/cadence-tools/cadence-for-intellij-platform. All it's versions are also released there, and it's signed binaries can be downloaded from the releases for anyone wanting to install the plugin from the disk.
• The plugin has been submitted on the JetBrains plugin marketplace, and can be downloaded also from inside compatible Intellij versions (2021.2+) (it is named Cadence). https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/17764-cadence (The current version v0.4 with the LSP support has been submitted but is still waiting for JetBrains approval (2 business days),
• Documentation on how to use the plugin, and how to modify / extend the syntax highlighting have been included in the README file of the repository: https://github.com/cadence-tools/cadence-for-intellij-platform/blob/main/README.md

Requirements Check

• Have have you met the milestone requirements? YES
• Have you included tests (if applicable)? N/A
• Have you met the contribution guidelines of the repos you have submitted code to (if applicable)? N/A
• If this is the last milestone:
  • Demonstrate that you've met all the acceptance criteria (link to code, demos, instructions to run etc.)
  • Demonstrate that you've met all milestone requirements and highlight any extensions or additional work done.

The Minimum Feature Set (Acceptance Criteria) section of the issue #19 defines:

Syntax highlighting: The Cadence Visual Studio Code extension defines a grammar for the Cadence language, which is used to support syntax highlighting. You will need to port this grammar to IntelliJ.

This has been achieved as seen on the screenshot below (or by installing the extension and opening .cdc files):

Semantic analysis and error checking: The Cadence language includes an implementation of the Language Server Protocol (LSP), defined in the Cadence repository. LSP servers are used by code editors and IDEs, most notably Visual Studio Code, to implement language-specific editor features. You can find a full list of LSP implementations on the Microsoft website. The Cadence Visual Studio Code extension uses the LSP to report syntax problems and semantic errors (e.g. type errors) back to the developer. You will need to integrate IntelliJ with the Cadence language server to report these same errors inside IntelliJ. IntelliJ does not support the LSP out of the box; you will need to use a plugin such as this: https://github.com/ballerina-platform/lsp4intellij

This has been achieved as seen on the GIF below (or by installing the extension and editing .cdc files):

The Milestone Requirements include:

1. Implement syntax highlighting for Cadence in IntelliJ.
2. Implement semantic error checking using the Cadence language server in IntelliJ.
3. Expand your plugin so that is compatible with at least one other IntelliJ Platform-based editors (e.g. Goland). The more the better!
4. Finalize your submission and publish it to the JetBrains marketplace.

We showed before that 1 and 2 have been achieved. Milestones 3 and 4 have also been achieved, as we showed before and as is visible in this screenshot from the Jetbrains Market place:

The Software Requirements include:

Your submission should be implemented in Java as an IntelliJ plugin using this guide: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/docs/intellij/getting-started.html     **Done**

The plugin should be installable from the JetBrains marketplace.    **Done (shown before)**

The source code for your plugin should be available in a public repository.  **Done. [link](https://github.com/cadence-tools/cadence-for-intellij-platform)**

The Other Requirements include

Documentation: The following pieces of documentation need to be completed alongside the code for a successful submission: Installation guide Done, in the README

Code standards or guidelines Follow the general contribution guidelines. DONE

Extensions / additional work done

• The plugin offers settings for changing the colors of the different tokens of the syntax highlighting
• By following the Intellij best practices, the syntax highlighting follows any color schemes (e.g. Dark mode) of the user
• The plugin includes settings that allow logging all the messages between the plugin and the LSP server for debug purposes
• In it's LSP support, the plugin doesn't provide only semantic analysis and error checking, but also code completion, and ctrl+click to go to definition

Include a payout structure by percentage for each team member (ie. Bob: 20%, Alice: 80%).

@NikitasKotsolakos 100% (In the end, the 2nd team member, @Roronnoazoro) didn't have the time to participate)

Other Details

• Is there anything specific you'd like the PoC to know or review for? I also moved the Milestone 1 submission on the team name folder as I had forgotten it then. Nothing else special, but I am always looking into and making small improvements in the plugin
• Are there other references, documentation, or relevant artificats to mention for this PR (ie. external links to justify design decisions, etc.)? No

[MaxStalker]

Amazing work, @NikitasKotsolakos ! Thank you so much for making it real - now I can finally write Cadence code in WebStorm! 🙇

We can mark this as 🎉 Milestones Achieved 🎉 Congratulations!

[NikitasKotsolakos]

Thank you very much @MaxStalker , hope it is helpful, and also thank you for the feedback during the development!

I also did quick update to the documentation with the instructions I had given you in the task to make it more clear for people in the future, and included these instructions links in the plugin description itself for people who just find the plugin through Intellij.

I will be monitoring Github and Discord to see the next steps now that the flip-fest is over

[kerrywei]

update: clarifying usage with the author in https://github.com/cadence-tools/cadence-for-intellij-platform/issues/16

[kerrywei]

unblocked by a workaround from the author. confirmed it works on Mac OS X. merging in this PR as milestones have been achieved