Scratch GUI with LEGO BOOST and Xcratch Integration

Extensions in this fork repo

This includes xcratch scratch-vm and scratch-gui combined with fix for Lego Boost Distance Sensor. Try it on: https://crispstrobe.github.io/scratch-gui/ For MacOS or iOS, you might wannt to use Scrub. You can just use an URL like above in Scrub settings.

Acknowledgments

• Scratch Team for the original Scratch, Scratch Foundation for maintaining Scratch 3.0
• Xcratch/yokobond for the extensible Scratch mod (https://github.com/xcratch/xcratch.github.io)
• afpeuti for the LEGO BOOST distance sensor implementation (scratchfoundation/scratch-vm#2299))

Set this up

You can of course easily setup such a modified version of Scratch GUI. Example procedure below:

Prerequisites

• Node.js
• Git
• macOS or Linux (Windows users might need to adjust some commands)

Initial Setup

1. Set up the Virtual Machine (VM)

# Clone your fork of scratch-vm
cd ~/code
git clone https://github.com/CrispStrobe/scratch-vm.git scratch-vm-4
cd scratch-vm-4

# Add Xcratch's VM as a remote
git remote add xcratch https://github.com/xcratch/scratch-vm.git
git fetch xcratch

# Create backup branch and merge Xcratch changes
git checkout develop
git branch develop-backup-oct2024
git merge xcratch/xcratch

# Install dependencies and build
npm install
npm run build

2. Set up the GUI

# Clone your fork of scratch-gui
cd ~/code
git clone https://github.com/CrispStrobe/scratch-gui.git scratch-gui-3
cd scratch-gui-3

# Add Xcratch's GUI as a remote
git remote add xcratch https://github.com/xcratch/scratch-gui.git
git fetch xcratch

# Create backup branch and merge Xcratch changes
git checkout develop
git branch develop-backup-oct2024
git merge xcratch/xcratch

# Install dependencies and link VM
npm install
npm link ../scratch-vm-4

Development Setup

Configure webpack.config.js

The webpack configuration needs to be updated for proper development and deployment. Key changes include:

1. Update the dev server configuration
2. Set up PWA support
3. Configure proper asset handling

Example webpack.config.js sections:

// Dev server configuration
buildConfig.merge({
    devServer: {
        host: '0.0.0.0',
        port: process.env.PORT || 8601,
        allowedHosts: 'all'
    }
});

Local Development

To run the project locally:

cd ~/code/scratch-gui-3
npm start

Visit http://localhost:8601 in your browser.

Deployment to GitHub Pages

1. Prepare for deployment

Update package.json to include:

{
  "homepage": "https://crispstrobe.github.io/scratch-gui",
  "scripts": {
    "predeploy": "npm run build",
    "deploy": "touch build/.nojekyll && gh-pages -t -d build -m \"[skip ci] Build for $(git log --pretty=format:%H -n1)\""
  }
}

2. Manual Deployment

If the automated deployment doesn't work, use these steps:

# Create a fresh directory for gh-pages
cd ~/code
mkdir scratch-gui-3-pages
cd scratch-gui-3-pages

# Initialize git and copy build files
git init
cp -r ../scratch-gui-3/build/* .

# Set up gh-pages branch
git add .
git checkout -b gh-pages
git commit -m "Deploy to GitHub Pages"
git remote add origin https://github.com/CrispStrobe/scratch-gui.git
git push -u origin gh-pages --force

3. Configure GitHub Pages

1. Go to your repository settings on GitHub
2. Navigate to Pages section
3. Set source to "Deploy from a branch"
4. Select "gh-pages" branch
5. Save changes

Your site will be available at https://crispstrobe.github.io/scratch-gui/

Project Structure

Important directories and files:

scratch-vm-4/
└── src/
    └── extensions/
        └── scratch3_boost/  # LEGO BOOST extension code

scratch-gui-3/
├── src/
│   └── lib/
│       └── libraries/
│           └── extensions/  # Extension configurations
└── build/                  # Built files for deployment

Original general Scratch-GUI README

Scratch GUI is a set of React components that comprise the interface for creating and running Scratch 3.0 projects

To open the current build in your browser on Github Pages:

https://scratchfoundation.github.io/scratch-gui/

Installation

This requires you to have Git and Node.js installed.

In your own node environment/application:

npm install https://github.com/scratchfoundation/scratch-gui.git

If you want to edit/play yourself:

git clone https://github.com/scratchfoundation/scratch-gui.git
cd scratch-gui
npm install

You may want to add --depth=1 to the git clone command because there are some large files in the git repository history.

Getting started

Running the project requires Node.js to be installed.

Running

Open a Command Prompt or Terminal in the repository and run:

npm start

Then go to http://localhost:8601/ - the playground outputs the default GUI component

Developing alongside other Scratch repositories

Getting another repo to point to this code

If you wish to develop scratch-gui alongside other scratch repositories that depend on it, you may wish to have the other repositories use your local scratch-gui build instead of fetching the current production version of the scratch-gui that is found by default using npm install.

Here's how to link your local scratch-gui code to another project's node_modules/scratch-gui.

Configuration

1. In your local scratch-gui repository's top level:

   1. Make sure you have run npm install
   2. Build the dist directory by running BUILD_MODE=dist npm run build
   3. Establish a link to this repository by running npm link

2. From the top level of each repository (such as scratch-www) that depends on scratch-gui:

   1. Make sure you have run npm install
   2. Run npm link scratch-gui
   3. Build or run the repository

Using npm run watch

Instead of BUILD_MODE=dist npm run build, you can use BUILD_MODE=dist npm run watch instead. This will watch for changes to your scratch-gui code, and automatically rebuild when there are changes. Sometimes this has been unreliable; if you are having problems, try going back to BUILD_MODE=dist npm run build until you resolve them.

Oh no! It didn't work!

If you can't get linking to work right, try:

• Follow the recipe above step by step and don't change the order. It is especially important to run npm install before npm link as installing after the linking will reset the linking.
• Make sure the repositories are siblings on your machine's file tree, like .../.../MY_SCRATCH_DEV_DIRECTORY/scratch-gui/ and .../.../MY_SCRATCH_DEV_DIRECTORY/scratch-www/.
• Consistent node.js version: If you have multiple Terminal tabs or windows open for the different Scratch repositories, make sure to use the same node version in all of them.
• If nothing else works, unlink the repositories by running npm unlink in both, and start over.

Testing

Documentation

You may want to review the documentation for Jest and Enzyme as you write your tests.

See jest cli docs for more options.

Running tests

NOTE: If you're a Windows user, please run these scripts in Windows cmd.exe instead of Git Bash/MINGW64.

Before running any tests, make sure you have run npm install from this (scratch-gui) repository's top level.

Main testing command

To run linter, unit tests, build, and integration tests, all at once:

npm test

Running unit tests

To run unit tests in isolation:

npm run test:unit

To run unit tests in watch mode (watches for code changes and continuously runs tests):

npm run test:unit -- --watch

You can run a single file of integration tests (in this example, the button tests):

$(npm bin)/jest --runInBand test/unit/components/button.test.jsx

Running integration tests

Integration tests use a headless browser to manipulate the actual HTML and javascript that the repo produces. You will not see this activity (though you can hear it when sounds are played!).

To run the integration tests, you'll first need to install Chrome, Chromium, or a variant, along with Chromedriver.

Note that integration tests require you to first create a build that can be loaded in a browser:

npm run build

Then, you can run all integration tests:

npm run test:integration

Or, you can run a single file of integration tests (in this example, the backpack tests):

$(npm bin)/jest --runInBand test/integration/backpack.test.js

If you want to watch the browser as it runs the test, rather than running headless, use:

USE_HEADLESS=no $(npm bin)/jest --runInBand test/integration/backpack.test.js

Troubleshooting

Ignoring optional dependencies

When running npm install, you can get warnings about optional dependencies:

npm WARN optional Skipping failed optional dependency /chokidar/fsevents:
npm WARN notsup Not compatible with your operating system or architecture: fsevents@1.2.7

You can suppress them by adding the no-optional switch:

npm install --no-optional

Further reading: Stack Overflow

Resolving dependencies

When installing for the first time, you can get warnings that need to be resolved:

npm WARN eslint-config-scratch@5.0.0 requires a peer of babel-eslint@^8.0.1 but none was installed.
npm WARN eslint-config-scratch@5.0.0 requires a peer of eslint@^4.0 but none was installed.
npm WARN scratch-paint@0.2.0-prerelease.20190318170811 requires a peer of react-intl-redux@^0.7 but none was installed.
npm WARN scratch-paint@0.2.0-prerelease.20190318170811 requires a peer of react-responsive@^4 but none was installed.

You can check which versions are available:

npm view react-intl-redux@0.* version

You will need to install the required version:

npm install  --no-optional --save-dev react-intl-redux@^0.7

The dependency itself might have more missing dependencies, which will show up like this:

user@machine:~/sources/scratch/scratch-gui (491-translatable-library-objects)$ npm install  --no-optional --save-dev react-intl-redux@^0.7
scratch-gui@0.1.0 /media/cuideigin/Linux/sources/scratch/scratch-gui
├── react-intl-redux@0.7.0
└── UNMET PEER DEPENDENCY react-responsive@5.0.0

You will need to install those as well:

npm install  --no-optional --save-dev react-responsive@^5.0.0

Further reading: Stack Overflow

Troubleshooting

If you run into npm install errors, try these steps:

1. run npm cache clean --force
2. Delete the node_modules directory
3. Delete package-lock.json
4. run npm install again

Publishing to GitHub Pages

You can publish the GUI to github.io so that others on the Internet can view it. Read the wiki for a step-by-step guide.

Understanding the project state machine

Since so much code throughout scratch-gui depends on the state of the project, which goes through many different phases of loading, displaying and saving, we created a "finite state machine" to make it clear which state it is in at any moment. This is contained in the file src/reducers/project-state.js .

It can be hard to understand the code in src/reducers/project-state.js . There are several types of data and functions used, which relate to each other:

Loading states

These include state constant strings like:

• NOT_LOADED (the default state),
• ERROR,
• FETCHING_WITH_ID,
• LOADING_VM_WITH_ID,
• REMIXING,
• SHOWING_WITH_ID,
• SHOWING_WITHOUT_ID,
• etc.

Transitions

These are names for the action which causes a state change. Some examples are:

• START_FETCHING_NEW,
• DONE_FETCHING_WITH_ID,
• DONE_LOADING_VM_WITH_ID,
• SET_PROJECT_ID,
• START_AUTO_UPDATING,

How transitions relate to loading states

Like this diagram of the project state machine shows, various transition actions can move us from one loading state to another:

Note: for clarity, the diagram above excludes states and transitions relating to error handling.

Example

Here's an example of how states transition.

Suppose a user clicks on a project, and the page starts to load with URL https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/123456.

Here's what will happen in the project state machine:

1. When the app first mounts, the project state is NOT_LOADED.
2. The SET_PROJECT_ID redux action is dispatched (from src/lib/project-fetcher-hoc.jsx), with projectId set to 123456. This transitions the state from NOT_LOADED to FETCHING_WITH_ID.
3. The FETCHING_WITH_ID state. In src/lib/project-fetcher-hoc.jsx, the projectId value 123456 is used to request the data for that project from the server.
4. When the server responds with the data, src/lib/project-fetcher-hoc.jsx dispatches the DONE_FETCHING_WITH_ID action, with projectData set. This transitions the state from FETCHING_WITH_ID to LOADING_VM_WITH_ID.
5. The LOADING_VM_WITH_ID state. In src/lib/vm-manager-hoc.jsx, we load the projectData into Scratch's virtual machine ("the vm").
6. When loading is done, src/lib/vm-manager-hoc.jsx dispatches the DONE_LOADING_VM_WITH_ID action. This transitions the state from LOADING_VM_WITH_ID to SHOWING_WITH_ID.
7. The SHOWING_WITH_ID state. Now the project appears normally and is playable and editable.

Donate

We provide Scratch free of charge, and want to keep it that way! Please consider making a donation to support our continued engineering, design, community, and resource development efforts. Donations of any size are appreciated. Thank you!