Microsoft MakeCode

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Microsoft MakeCode is based on the open source project Microsoft Programming Experience Toolkit (PXT). Microsoft MakeCode is the name in the user-facing editors, PXT is used in all the GitHub sources.

PXT is a framework for creating special-purpose programming experiences for beginners, especially focused on computer science education. PXT's underlying programming language is a subset of TypeScript (leaving out JavaScript dynamic features).

The main features of PXT are:

• a Blockly-based code editor along with converter to the text format
• a Monaco code editor that powers VS Code, editor's features are listed here.
• extensibility support to define new blocks in TypeScript
• an ARM Thumb machine code emitter
• a command-line package manager

More info:

• About
• Documentation

Examples of Editors built with PXT:

• https://makecode.microbit.org
• https://makecode.adafruit.com
• https://makecode.chibitronics.com
• https://minecraft.makecode.com
• More editors at https://makecode.com/labs

Branches

• master is the active development branch, currently v3.* builds
• v0 is the servicing branch for v0.* builds

Running a target from localhost

Please follow the instructions here.

Linking a target to PXT

If you are modifying your own instance of PXT and want a target (such as pxt-microbit) to use your local version, cd to the directory of the target (pxt-microbit, in our example, which should be a directory sibling of pxt) and perform

npm link ../pxt

If you have multiple checkouts of pxt, you can do the following:

• run npm i in pxt and the target
• in the target, run pxt link ..\some-other-pxt (you may need to update your CLI first by running npm install -g pxt)

If you run npm i afterwards (in either the target or pxt), you might need to repeat these steps.

Build

First, install Node: minimum version 8.

To build the PXT command line tools:

npm install
npm run build

Then install the pxt command line tool (only need to do it once):

npm install -g pxt

After this you can run pxt from anywhere within the build tree.

To start the local web server, run pxt serve from within the root of an app target (e.g. pxt-microbit). PXT will open the editor in your default web browser.

Icons

There are a number of custom icons (to use in addition to http://semantic-ui.com/elements/icon.html) in the svgicons/ directory. These need to be 1000x1000px. Best start with an existing one. To see available icons go to http://localhost:3232/icons.html (this file, along with icons.css containing the generated WOFF icon font, is created during build).

If you're having trouble with display of the icon you created, try:

npm install -g svgo
svgo svgicons/myicon.svg

Tests

The tests are located in the tests/ subdirectory and are a combination of node and browser tests. To execute them, run npm run test:all in the root directory.

License

MIT License

Code of Conduct

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact [email protected] with any additional questions or comments.

Contact Us

Get in touch

Trademarks

MICROSOFT, the Microsoft Logo, and MAKECODE are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. They can only be used for the purposes described in and in accordance with Microsoft’s Trademark and Brand guidelines published at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/intellectualproperty/trademarks/usage/general.aspx. If the use is not covered in Microsoft’s published guidelines or you are not sure, please consult your legal counsel or MakeCode team ([email protected]).