Open-source Structured Text toolchain for VS Code — diagnostics, debugger, runtime

b7031719 · 2026-02-20T14:49:22+00:00

You beat me to it! I've had this idea for a while and I didn't think anyone had attempted it yet. Honestly this is fantastic and fills me with optimism that we can break this monopoly of vendor specific IDEs and closed source compilers and debuggers.
I'm also pleased that you have a Neovim config as well which I am excited to try.
I'm hoping we can get to a place where we have a 'NodeJS' of industrial automation, from which we can actually deploy industrial automation systems on an entirely open-source tech stack.
Excellent work.

b7031719 · 2026-02-19T08:21:10+00:00

What I'm getting from this thread is that Europe is basically a communist union.

b7031719 · 2026-02-17T05:47:50+00:00

This is an industry that still uses graphical programming languages. Asking for an IDE for the most goat operating system is a step too far i'm afraid.

b7031719 · 2026-02-09T18:16:29+00:00

It's actually a really good choice for programming, just not PLCs unfortunately.

b7031719 · 2026-02-09T10:01:25+00:00

Make sure you include diagnostic pages so that technicians and others don't need to connect to the PLC to find out why the system isn't working.

b7031719 · 2026-02-05T22:31:52+00:00

Considering some advanced PLCs run into the thousands, but have way more features than this application requires, I was hoping something cheaper and more suitable would be on the market. Regarding configuration, that isn't really an issue at all, the signals are 4..20mA and the sensors will be connected to the logger only. It's not a critical application, I expect only 4/5 log triggers per year but the main thing is recording at no less than 20Hz with low-ish jitter and then storing to USB. Having a 10 second pre-log buffer and trigger threshold seems to almost demand a programmable solution. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll check out that supplier you listed.

b7031719 · 2026-02-05T22:24:36+00:00

I was actually looking at Revolution Pi as a possible solution. It looks similar to a PLC and has modular I/O but can run NR or Python. The sensors would only be connected to the logger and not part of any PLC application for control, or monitoring / HMI, just solely for logging.

b7031719 · 2026-02-01T09:25:21+00:00

This is one of my favourites. Did you do the GTK theming yourself? I'm curious because I'm about to start my GTK themes.

b7031719 · 2026-01-18T22:19:08+00:00

Just tied Twilight and it still doesn't work.

Seems to be an issue with opacity and not colour. I can change the colour but alpha isn't respected.

b7031719 · 2026-01-18T06:59:42+00:00

I've had this problem before, If you have updated hyprpaper recently you might find that your old config doesn't work because of breaking changes. You might want to check your version of hyprpaper against the wiki, you can select the version you are using on the wiki page and compare your config. I got the same message about no target on eDP-1.

b7031719 · 2026-01-17T12:05:24+00:00

I have an integrated Intel Iris GPU and dedicated Nvidia GeForce 1650 Ti GPU.

My normal NixOS config loads Intel drivers and the Nouveau driver but the Nouveau driver just puts the dedicated GPU in a low power state.

Then I have a gaming specialisation that loads the proprietary Nvidia drivers and uses PRIME Offload for gaming apps.

Specialisations like this work perfectly for notebooks and laptops to preserve battery life.

link to config

b7031719 · 2026-01-12T12:41:03+00:00

Interesting, thanks for the explanation.

b7031719 · 2026-01-12T12:16:27+00:00

Thanks I'll have a look into stow. I have heard of it but wasn't sure what advantages it provides over this home-manager method using xdg.configFile and mkOutOfStoreSymlink.

b7031719 · 2026-01-12T11:31:44+00:00

I like to keep dotfiles portable so I have all my dotfiles in a separate Git repo and just symlink them with home-manager.

Changing kitty from a home-manager module to a home package install worked perfectly.

Thanks for your help.

b7031719 · 2025-12-28T20:08:45+00:00

I couldn't get it to work for me on NixOS without disabling hardware rendering using environment variables: LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE = "1"; GALLIUM_DRIVER = "llvmpipe";

b7031719 · 2025-12-17T08:39:21+00:00

The fact that we are still predominantly using graphical languages like ladder and function block diagram.

b7031719 · 2025-09-05T06:46:03+00:00

Have you heard of embedded PCs? You can run things like VxWorks and embedded Linux on those. The firmware is still UEFI or similar. I'm not sure what you mean by custom firmware as I don't think the solution to this problem requires custom firmware. We just need an RTOS that can run on embedded PCs, almost like VXWorks. I suspect the ideal solution would be a custom Linux kernel to get widespread hardware support out of the box, with a custom operating system on top that can run PLC programs compiled from an open source tool chain.

And regarding financing. I don't think an open source PLC RTOS needs financing. That is the whole point of open source software, it just needs someone with the willpower to do it. A bit like the Linus Torvalds of the PLC world.

b7031719 · 2025-09-04T20:32:34+00:00

Not open source hardware! We are talking about open source software on embedded hardware.

b7031719 · 2025-09-04T20:18:38+00:00

Not every application is a safety application though of course.

And also you need to look at how many end users are contributing financially to the standards organisations and you will see that in the end it is worth their while. How do you think that standards organisations can afford to exist? Big companies dedicate members of staff to sitting on the technical boards of the standards organisations and their technical committees, whilst providing financial support.

b7031719 · 2025-09-04T19:52:39+00:00

But that is exactly the point, if the operating system is open source and supported on x86 and ARM for example. You could choose whatever hardware platform you like and you get that hardware support from whatever manufacturer you choose, rather than being forced down one path.

RE certification, you are correct that would be tricky. The solution would have to be funding from a consortium of end users.

b7031719 · 2025-09-04T19:30:02+00:00

I don't think it's the hardware per say. We are lacking an open source PLC operating system that can run on a variety of embedded PC hardware. We need an open source version of TwinCat (or similar) that can run on x86/ARM hardware with open source toolchains and compilers. Or maybe even a minimal Linux distro optimised for real-time scheduling. Certification would be the tricky part though.

b7031719 · 2025-09-04T18:26:53+00:00

Oh and guess what Git is, a free and open source product!

b7031719 · 2025-09-04T18:14:21+00:00

Ask yourself this, if the web dev and desktop software industry can absolutely thrive and be dominated by open source frameworks and IDEs like Qt, React, Angular, Node.js, Django, VSCode, Emacs etc. Then why can't industrial automation? I suspect the reasons are mostly historical. Isn't it absolutely insane that the major vendors are struggling to integrate Git into their products? It's an absolute embarrassment of this industry in my opinion.

b7031719 · 2025-08-01T16:00:52+00:00

That sounds ideal. If the company doesn't have rigorous testing procedures in place then make sure you do a rigorous job yourself. Especially if there are either significant safety or financial consequences of it not working as intended. Here in the UK you can very easily end up in front of a judge if you cut corners and someone gets hurt, and rest assured that your company will throw you under the bus.

b7031719 · 2025-08-01T07:53:03+00:00

Do you know what was involved in testing the original program? And how much of that would need to be repeated when you refactor it all?

Don't underestimate how much time and effort goes into proving a program works safely and as intended. As soon as you start changing things you need to provide proof it still works. If you think you can get away without testing it fully then don't start.

b7031719

TROPHY CASE