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Run Shards

Note

This guide is for new users unfamiliar with Visual Studio Code and the creation of new code files.

Click here to skip the tutorial and jump to the overview.

Learn how to employ Shards to execute code and bring your works to fruition!

Ensure that you have Shards built before attempting to run it.

Preparing the Script

In VS Code, select “File → Open Folder…” (Ctrl+K+O) and select the Shards repository.

Select the New Folder button New Folder Icon near the top of your Explorer window and name the folder “scripts”.

Create a new “scripts” folder.

Right-click the “scripts” folder and select “New File…”. Name the file “helloworld.edn”.

Create the “helloworld.edn” file in the “scripts” folder.

.edn

EDN is a file format used by other programming languages such as Clojure.

Paste the following code into your new file and save it. 

(defmesh main)
(defwire helloworld
  (Msg "Hello World"))
(schedule main helloworld)
(run main)

What does the code mean?

Even without in-depth knowledge, the Shards language is visual enough for you to make a guess at what it does. You define a mesh called “main” and create a wire called “helloworld” that sends out a “Hello World” message. We then schedule the wire on the mesh and run it. The code is therefore about sending out a “Hello World” message.

To better understand the intricacies of the code used, do give the Shards primer a read!

Now that we have created a .edn file, the final step is to use shards.exe to execute the code in it.

Running the Script

Open the Git Bash terminal and navigate to your Shards repository with the command cd $(cygpath -u '(X)'), where (X) is the directory of your folder. For example, cd $(cygpath -u 'C:\Projects\Shards').

cd $(cygpath -u '(X)')

To run the Debug version of Shards, use the command ./build/Debug/shards ./scripts/(X).edn, whereby (X) is the name of your .edn file.

./build/Debug/shards ./scripts/(X).edn

To run the Release version of Shards, use the command ./build/Release/shards ./scripts/(X).edn, whereby (X) is the name of your .edn file.

./build/Release/shards ./scripts/(X).edn

To run our “helloworld.edn” script, we run the command ./build/Debug/shards ./scripts/helloworld.edn.

./build/Debug/shards ./scripts/helloworld.edn

[debug] [2022-09-19 11:47:36.873] [T-19628] [SHCore.cpp::163] Exe path: C:\Projects\Shards\build\Debug
[debug] [2022-09-19 11:47:36.873] [T-19628] [SHCore.cpp::164] Script path: C:\Projects\Shards\scripts
.
.
.
[info] [2022-09-19 11:47:36.893] [T-19628] [logging.cpp::98] [helloworld] Hello World
[debug] [2022-09-19 11:47:36.893] [T-19628] [runtime.cpp::2712] Running cleanup on wire: helloworld users count: 0
[debug] [2022-09-19 11:47:36.893] [T-19628] [runtime.cpp::2752] Ran cleanup on wire: helloworld
[trace] [2022-09-19 11:47:36.893] [T-19628] [runtime.cpp::2031] wire helloworld ended
[trace] [2022-09-19 11:47:36.893] [T-19628] [runtime.hpp::294] stopping wire: helloworld

Congratulations! You have printed out your first “Hello World” message to the terminal with Shards! ⭐

Overview

  1. Use ./build/Debug/shards ./scripts/fileName.edn to run scripts with the Debug version of Shards. 

    ./build/Debug/shards ./scripts/fileName.edn

  2. Use ./build/Release/shards ./scripts/fileName.edn to run scripts with the Release version of Shards. 

    ./build/Release/shards ./scripts/fileName.edn