ABAP Development Tools Update 1.1 - Reports, tables and abapLint

[00:00:00]Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of ABAP Explained. In today's episode, we're checking out the new update for the development tools for VS Code. This morning, a new version came out. It's version 1.1.

[00:00:13]And with this version come a lot of cool new features, uh such as editing programs includes, structures, tables, and so on and so on. We've got a wrap and CDS support. So, great news. We're going to check those out. And we're going to see some stuff that I missed in the last episode.

[00:00:41]I have seen it by going to the LinkedIn post of Marion Zeis. So, check out his post and you can follow him if you want to stay uh up-to-date with those extensions. So, my ABAP server is running on my virtual machine.

[00:00:59]And let's go to Visual Studio Code to our workspace. So, of course, if you've got the extension, if you're new to Visual Studio Code, you need to first install the extension and configure it. If you haven't seen it, check out my last episode. And you need to update the extension or choose how to update as I did.

[00:01:23]So, we've got our uh workspace or server and we can log in using control shift A just to search for an item or log on to destination directly here. So, I'm going to log out log on and my uh temporary um temporary folder is going to open with all of my um items. So, in the last episode, we've seen uh a small glimpse of classes, which you can see under source code library.

[00:02:02]And we were able to edit those classes that we were aware of.

[00:02:09]And you still can do it.

[00:02:11]>> [laughter] >> Nothing changed, but the cool thing is that we can now edit programs, so reports also.

[00:02:17]And if I choose one of my reports, all the reports we can actually um see and edit everything just as it would be a standard uh above report and log on. You see also with syntax checking and so on. So, if I'm missing a dot, it's going to underline.

[00:02:41]And here uh we can choose to activate all objects. Of course, it goes with control F3, I believe, also.

[00:02:48]Uh we can have multiple inactive objects. So, for this instance, I'm selecting this one and going on okay.

[00:02:54]And the object is activated successfully, as you can see.

[00:02:59]So, that's very cool.

[00:03:01]And uh for classes, what I wanted to also show you that I haven't in the last episode, are those two um I know, sections. So, we've got outline and timeline. Also, for reports, it's very cool that you can see all of your uh variable declarations.

[00:03:24]You're For example, yeah, this is a field symbol and so on.

[00:03:28]So, you can jump directly to those declarations. And for example, directly jump to includes. So, you don't need to um search for it or anything like that.

[00:03:38]Now, yeah, and so uh the events also. So, that's very cool. And in the timeline, what is also cool, what's missing in Logon, we know that the version system isn't the best, um so to say we've got it already in Eclipse, but now it's also here. So, the timeline can show us what has changed in our in our report, right? So, if I for example, I don't know, um, yeah.

[00:04:12]Duplicate some lines, save them, you can see that, um, it is remembered, so to say.

[00:04:23]But, I see it only saves Oh, no. Now it's nicely showing those changes, right? So, that I added those three lines, just like it.

[00:04:32]We don't have get uh activated yet, but it shows this very nicely, and it's very cool also for for Let's close those.

[00:04:44]For classes. So, for example, for classes, let's choose one.

[00:04:51]And it's going to outline all of the um, methods, types, and so on we've got in our class. So, at first I was like, "Ah, you can jump. You can not really the best." But, now you can just jump to directly to the classes uh to the methods you're interested in.

[00:05:09]And if you've got, um, for example, uh, the interface, if you go with uh, control and click, I believe so, it's going to take you to this, for example, interface we defined here.

[00:05:25]So, that's very cool. And as I said, this timeline is a local history, which is very, very, very helpful.

[00:05:33]So, I tried to edit, um, other development objects, as for reports and so on, but I don't know.

[00:05:43]Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but it still doesn't pop up for me for data elements, domains, and I believe table types. It still says it's not available, but I'm pretty sure at at work when I checked those, it was working just fine. Maybe I didn't check data elements. I don't know.

[00:06:04]I'm sure it will come soon. I mean, it's in the release notes, so either I'm doing something wrong or I don't know.

[00:06:10]But, we sure can edit tables. Mhm, that was also missing. Uh edit uh tables just as in Eclipse. It's [snorts] an Eclipse view, so to say.

[00:06:21]It's going to be different if you haven't if you were using only mhm logon your whole life, but for example, you can directly edit labels for each field uh apart from the logon view that we uh all know.

[00:06:38]And yeah. Also, other uh annotations, everything is in this annotation uh style.

[00:06:47]And here's some um configuration uh values also in the JSON. So, that's very cool.

[00:06:55]And uh one of my viewer mentioned that I've missed that we've got MCP server uh here available also. So, that's very cool also. I'm not going to showcase it, uh but you can do so. So, that's very cool. But, we can, for example, use also uh another extension, which is ABAP lint.

[00:07:15]And if you install this, it's pretty cool. It's got some um checks for your coding.

[00:07:24]And it will tell you what the usual what mistakes have you done in your class and so on and so on. Now, it works differently for mhm for each each type, I would say. I like to use it for reports. I'm sure you can change those in the settings, but for example, for a program it's yeah, maybe this example is too simple.

[00:07:51]But for example, this this this report shows us that if we go here that avoid Hungarian notation. So I'm using still the old notation LT which many projects still use and probably will use. So it's up to you if you want to change that.

[00:08:08]But yeah, maybe we we're jumping to this new ABAP era where uh we're not going to need to define LT, LS, and so on because if as you can see, if I go for example to this constant and I hover it, it's giving me the value, the type, and so on even if I'm somewhere on the bottom.

[00:08:29]Uh let's search for for example here. You don't need to double click to check what is this type, what is it a table, is it a string, and so on. You will now see it everything here by hovering. So for example, we won't be needing all of those.

[00:08:48]Yeah.

[00:08:50]values.

[00:08:51]And of course, I can Visual Studio Code select it and for example, replace it with table name.

[00:09:00]And I'm going to replace all. Right? So I know that it's gone.

[00:09:06]Unnecessary chaining. Okay, so it's telling me that it's only one declaration.

[00:09:10]Um so yeah, pretty cool.

[00:09:13]One more use for Visual Studio.

[00:09:15]Again here for the Hungarian notation.

[00:09:18]Here probably yeah, it will just say that you commented some code you shouldn't. Many projects still do it.

[00:09:23]>> [laughter] >> Um you wouldn't believe it, but yeah.

[00:09:28]And yeah, like there's many many things like auto completion also in some cases.

[00:09:34]And yeah, I would recommend you to check it out.

[00:09:38]It's pretty cool. Even here, for example, it's saying that there's like indentation. You can do a quick fix, but then in this case we can adjust to the um quick fix, but for some cases uh you're going to if you use this, it's going to ask you for the Copilot uh license and so on. So, if you have or not logged in, I'm not logged in, it won't do it, but still for those in the quick fix it will just delete all commented code, for example.

[00:10:13]All right.

[00:10:14]Cool, guys. So, uh for now I'm disabling it.

[00:10:19]>> [snorts] >> It's what I just uh showcased, but I think it's too much too much red for me.

[00:10:23]Like, especially in those classes where it will say that it's like keyword should be uppercase and lowercase. Yeah.

[00:10:29]But anyways, it should be in a video about the extension um of ABAP development tools and that ABAP language. Yeah, whatever.

[00:10:40]Cool. That's That's great. I mean, I I think we were going in the right direction to have more and more come to the ABAP development tools. I'm really happy that it's come to it.

[00:10:51]Um you can see we still need to have some work to do, so um yeah. I'm I'm really hoping that in the next uh versions there's going to be um a version where you can run the reports of code. We've got unit tests working, unit tests that you can run.

[00:11:09]And yeah, but still running reports is not possible as far as I've seen.

[00:11:16]Um so, there's still a long road to go, but yeah, we've got some stuff happening, and it was addressed as Marian stated here that here, that it was fair, Right? That it was not ready to replace Eclipse. So, he agreed with that, but they surely done some good work. So, let's keep up the good work and let's hope more is coming. Guys, thanks for watching. If you enjoyed, leave a like and a subscription and a comment. What do you think about the new update? And I hope I will see you in the next episode.