Roku Developer Program

[Trevor]

I tried Eclipse and didn't like it at all, so I went about setting up my free editor of choice, Komodo Edit, for use with coding Roku channels. I thought I'd share it here for others who maybe didn't like the Eclipse experience as well.

First download Komodo Edit and install it (btw I'm working on a Mac and only guessing that this will work fine on Windows and Linux). This is just what I did, and in no way the only way to set this up.

I'm using the 4.1 SDK, but it probably doesn't matter which one you have. Basically we're going to add some shortcuts to makefiles that will install, remove and start a telnet session for debugging. In the main SDK directory I added another folder called projects. In that folder I created three others - packages, source and zips. In the source folder you can copy over one of the example projects, or start your own in its own folder. For now we'll use audioapp (RokuSDK_v41/examples/source/audioapp) as a working example. Copy the audioapp folder and the app.mk file from examples/source to projects/source.

Now we need to add one line to our new app.mk file to start a telnet session automatically after it installs our channel to the Roku box. Open up app.mk in Komodo Edit (why not, you just installed it :)) and space down line 96 (pkg: install) twice. Then on the newly empty line 96 enter telnet $(ROKU_DEV_TARGET) 8085 then save and close app.mk.

In Komodo Edit open the Toolbox sidebar under View->Tabs & Sidebars->Toolbox. Right click in the Toolbox and select Add->New Command.... In the first text box type the name you'd like to see in the Toolbox, something like Command: text box enter make install. Under Start in: Browse to the directory your makefile is in, in this case it's RokuSDK_v41/projects/source/audioapp. Add a new environment variable at the bottom of the window. In Variable Name: put ROKU_DEV_TARGET and then in Variable Value: enter the IP address for your Roku box (it's under Settings->About on the Roku). One thing to note if you're using DHCP then it's possible for this IP address to change, which means you'll have to edit this with the new value if it does. Select OK and you should now see Toolbox. Double-click it and it should compress the channel, side load it to the Roku box at the specified IP and start a telnet session for debugging - you can see all of this in the Command Output at the bottom of the Komodo Edit window. To close the telnet session hit the stop button in the lower right of the Komodo Edit window, you'll need to do this before running Toolbox again.

Repeat the Add->New Command... from above again, but this time change the first text box type (the name you'd like to see in the Toolbox) to something like Command: text box to make remove. When you double click this in the Toolbox to execute it, the channel will be removed from the Roku box.

I associated the PowerBasic language with .brs files, there are other Basic templates you can try and see which you like. In the very lower right of Komodo Edit you can switch to any language you like. Under Preferences (under Komodo on Mac, not sure on Linux or Windows) and File Associations you can Add Association and put in *.brs for Patterns and then select whichever language you like (I'm using PowerBasic) then click Add. It's obviously not perfect but it does do some very basic syntax highlighting now, enough for me anyhow.

You can use the Places sidebar (View->Tabs & Sidebars->Places) to navigate around your code files, similar to a "project" in an IDE. Click on the gear icon under Places and you can specify a directory to open.

It's not to difficult and nothing special, but I get around much better with this then I did in Eclipse.