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yogamerge
Visitor

Saving BRS Files on PC

Hey guys,

Just jumping into the dev stuff, all was working fine until I started to make changes to the brs files and saving them down with my text editor, when I save them down it appears that they're text documents and not brs files any longer, what should I use on the pc to open, edit and save them down as brs files?
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4 REPLIES 4
gonzotek
Visitor

Re: Saving BRS Files on PC

"yogamerge" wrote:
Hey guys,

Just jumping into the dev stuff, all was working fine until I started to make changes to the brs files and saving them down with my text editor, when I save them down it appears that they're text documents and not brs files any longer, what should I use on the pc to open, edit and save them down as brs files?

If you're just using notepad, it automatically adds .txt file extensions by default. You can fix the files you've already worked on by turning on file extensions in Windows Explorer:
https://www.google.com/search?q=explore ... 9&ie=UTF-8 (replace windows 8 with your version of windows).

And to create new files, I recommend a programmer's text editor like EverEdit, Notepad++, Scite, or any of a large number of others:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison ... g_features

You can also develop using an IDE (Integrated Development Environment). The most popular one for BrightScript is Eclipse, for which Roku provides a plugin that manages a number of developer tasks for you, as well as adds syntax highlighting and other BrightScript/Roku-specific features. Setting up and using Eclipse takes more effort at first, in order to acclimate yourself to the environment, but can really help speed things up and improve your workflow once you learn its ins-and-outs. I regularly use both Eclipse and plain text editors, and if you prefer to just work with the editor, there's nothing wrong with that :).
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EnTerr
Roku Guru

Re: Saving BRS Files on PC

I recommend going with a lightweight editor, unless you already use Eclipse on day-to-day basis. A few tips to make life more pleasant:

  • Tell the editor to use VBScript (or VB, BASIC...) highlighting for .BRS file, here is how for Notepad++ http://superuser.com/questions/151597

  • Tell windows to associate the file extension with the editor, so that double-clicking opens it in it.

  • Whip yourself a batch file to do a zip&deploy in one-shot (you can use makefile for that too)
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greubel
Visitor

Re: Saving BRS Files on PC

I use DEV C++ -> http://www.bloodshed.net/dev/devcpp.html
It's a great c/c++ project manager BUT it also works great as an editor for BRS and is free !
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yogamerge
Visitor

Re: Saving BRS Files on PC

Thanks guys, got it all figured out!!
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