Description
Solidity is a language for Smart Contracts used by the Ethereum Solidity compiler. Solang is a new implementation of the Solidity compiler, which can target wasm on more blockchains. Solang is written in rust and uses a generated Solidity parser.
Modern IDEs provide syntax highlighting, symbol definition, errors, warnings etc. This is often done via the Language Server Protocol. There are no good implementations of a language server for Solidity, however using the parser and resolver of Solang, this can change.
The idea of this mentorship is to extend the Solang Compiler project so it can run as a language server, that implements the Language Server Protocol.
Additional Information
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_Server_Protocol
https://microsoft.github.io/language-server-protocol/specifications/specification-current/
https://github.com/rust-lang/rls (rust language server)
https://github.com/hyperledger-labs/solang
Learning Objectives
- First and foremost the mentee will learn how to be a positive collaborator and contributor in an active open source project.
- Learn how to work within the Hyperledger open source ecosystem and culture.
- Understand smart contracts and the language Solidity language
- Increase understanding of compiler technology and development tooling
Expected Outcome
- Extend Solang in the existing rust code base to include language server binary
- Implement Syntax Highlighting
- Hovers
- Diagnostics for errors and warnings
- test cases
Relation to Hyperledger
Hyperledger Burrow and Hyperledger Sawtooth can run smart contracts compiled using Solang. So, this tool will help users write smart contracts in Solidity for those project.
Education Level
The ideal mentee is a university student or a developer with one or two years of experience with a solid background in Computer Science, especially compiler technology.
Skills
The following skills are required:
- Working knowledge of rust
- Understanding of the parsing and resolving stages of a compiler
Schedule
Please check the project plan for this.
Future plans
This is just the start of a language server. Many more features are possible in the language server protocol, e.g. refactoring.
Preferred Hours and Length of Internship
This project can be done by a full-time or part-time mentee.
Mentor(s) Names and Contact Info
Sean Young
hyperledger chat: seanyoung
twitter/telegram: iamseanyoung
Mentee Name and info
Shivam Balikondwar
hyperledger chat: sbalikondwar
Project Results
During the mentorship a language server was developed which used Solang compiler as its backend to process Solidity files.
The server is implemented in Rust using tower-lsp as a base framework to process client(editor)-server requests.
A vscode extension was also developed in TypeScript to use the server providing features:
- Syntax highlighting and bracket completion.
- Diagnostic info of compiler errors, warnings and hints.
- Hovers for different types of variable, struct, enum, function definitions.
The code is present on github under hyperledger-labs at https://github.com/hyperledger-labs/solang-vscode.
Checkout the readme page to learn how to use it.
A visual demo video of the implementation is uploaded here.
The project plan contains technicalities of how the client-server communication process takes place.
Final Report
Hyperledger Mentorship presentation slides(google slides link)