🔥Out now: improved support for fixed-format RPGLE 🔥

[worksofliam]

It brings me great pleasure to announce that for the RPGLE extension, 0.28.0, improvements to the RPGLE language server will support fixed-format RPGLE. Most importantly, we are shipping the ability to use the Peek and Go to References within Visual Studio Code.

This has been a long standing issue for people transitioning to Visual Studio Code. I am hoping this is one of the bigger technical hurdles that will help people as they start using it.

• Check out our docs on RPGLE in Visual Studio Code ✍️
• Make sure to have the RPGLE extension from the Marketplace 👩‍💻

I am expecting 0.28.0 to come out for 2025.

---

Here is an example of the Peek view that will be available:

And of course, there is the standard References view also:

And as a reminder, here is Peek Definition for variables:

Here is a bonus feature - we're adding the column outline for the current line you're editing on!

More new feature include being able to use go to implementation to find where a procedure is defined (not the prototype, the actual procedure):

[jkyeung]

This is a big deal. Most of us are mainly maintaining existing code, which naturally is mostly in fixed format. For long-time SEU users who have never tried RDi or other full-featured IDE, this is an eye-popping, "wow" feature. It will go a long way toward enticing old-schoolers to adopt VS Code. And of course, it significantly helps existing VS Code users work with their legacy RPG codebases.

[JDubb-At-Nelnet]

love the column outline!

[rogersonra]

It's great all the enhancements that you guys are doing.

That said, is there a way to turn off the column outline?

My problem is that it hides the previous line. Sometimes that line is important to the logic.
For example, the AND line is being hidden behind the outline.

Thanks,

Rob

[jkyeung]

Not sure if this is technically feasible, but even better still would be for the column outline to be on its own, unnumbered line.

Assuming it is possible to turn off completely, making it easy to toggle on and off would be preferable to having a configuration setting that enables or disables it.

What does it look like in SEU? (I actually never see this myself, and don't know how to make it show up. A colleague reports that when she's in SEU, it shows up and goes away kind of randomly, and she doesn't know how to control it or configure it.)

[worksofliam]

@rogersonra yes, it can be turned off in the VS Code settings under RPGLE.

[rogersonra]

In order to turn off the column outline, open Extensions, RPGLE and open the Settings.

Uncheck the Whether to show the fixed-format ruler by default.

[jkyeung]

@rogersonra - Thanks for that information.

For completeness, I'll mention that Shift+F4 is the way to enable or disable the ruler on demand.

Small quirk: If you've just toggled the ruler off, and immediately try to toggle it back on, it won't show up until you move the cursor to a different line.

_{More precisely: When you try to toggle the ruler back on, if the cursor is on the same line as where you toggled it off, the ruler won't show up. There can be intervening cursor movement and even edits between toggling off and back on, but if you put the cursor back on the toggle-off line just before toggling on, then the ruler won't show up until you move the cursor to some other line.}