[NTLK] A full blown NewtonScript compiler and source level debugger

[Matthias Melcher]

Hello everyone and devs in particular,

as you know, Simon Bell has recreated large parts of NewtonOS in his newton-framework project which he used to write NCX and other tools.

Well, a while ago he gave permission to build on his published code. I created my own fork of his code, to not disturb building NCX, and hacked away. Very recently, my good buddy, Claude, started to work with me, and he is so incredibly fast, it's hard to believe.

So Claude and I added a ton of new features to the newton framework.

The project compiles with CMake on macOS and Linux, and with a few fixes on Windows and generates a powerful command line tool named `newtc`

newtc is a compiler, decompiler, source level debugger, and runtime environment all in one.


-- decompiler --

newtc can decompile .pkg files into NewtonScript source code that can (usually) be recompiled back into functionally the same package. Decompilation works for 90% of apps that are on Unna. Recompilation is not entirely tested yet.
 
This means, you can peek at the source code of pretty much any package. You can modify code, and in many cases, you can create a package again. Thos packages should then run like the original with your modification.


-- compiler --

newtc can compile NewtonScript files while staying very very close to what the original compiler did. It generates packages or nsof files for you in NOS1 and NOS2 format.


-- runtime environment --

newtc comes with a lot of code and functions that emulate what's in the ROM. NewtonScript and Newton ByteCode are fully implemented. There are no graphics yet, but we have a great base for adding functionality as we go. 


-- debugging --

newtc comes with a built-in ByteCode debugger. Just like `gdb`, you can set breakpoints, and single step through your code


One more thing:

-- Visual Studio Code integration --

This is huge. I was able - with a lot of help from Claude - to create a NewtonScript extension for Visual Studio Code: https://github.com/MatthiasWM/VSNewt

For those who are not developers, VS Code is *the* cross platform developer environment for serious developers at the moment. It can be adapted to any programming language and has hundreds of custom extension for anything a developer might want.

This extension, "VSNNewt", implements syntax highlighting, the compiler, and a source level debugger full of features. Just write your code in a text window, press F5, and the code will run immediately. Set breakpoints by mouse click, single step into functions, evaluate variables. It's all there. Mark some text, hover the mouse over it, and VS Code wil evaluate what you marked and give you the result. 

Version 0.1.0 for macOS on Apple Silicon is available for testing here: 

https://github.com/MatthiasWM/VSNewt/releases/tag/v0.1.0


 - Matthias