[Idea] The Visual Studio extension should be converted to a source generator

[JohnLudlow]

Today there is a Visual Studio extension which handles generating a C# class with SDSL shader parameters, which ties you a bit to that IDE.

.NET now has source generators which are made for this type of scenario - the example I saw where they introduced it on YouTube processed data in a CSV file into a C# class. Best thing is they run as part of the compiler toolset rather than part of the IDE, so they are very IDE agnostic, and they're now very stable and usable.

What are your thoughts?

[VaclavElias]

Hmm, I don't have installed Visual Studio extension and the .cs file gets generated when I save .sdsl. But I do use Visual Studio. I think, it just gets generated only in Visual Studio? Not sure how this could be triggered from Rider or VS Code. Maybe someone can enlighten us 🙂

[JohnLudlow]

VS Code and rider wouldn't trigger it - the .NET compiler would.

Source generators work a bit like analysers, by extending the Roslyn .NET build tools, so the IDE doesn't actually need any specific integration. The same source generators work the same regardless of IDE

[JohnLudlow]

I might have some time this weekend to whip up a sample to show, if you could point me to where the SDSL parsing is done