robotcodedev/robotcode v2.5.0

on GitHub

Bug Fixes

• robot: Strip trailing = from variable names in resource builder (e11ca60)

• robot: Do not override the source on a model if there is already a source field (7e74c2d)

  Newer Robot Framework versions already set the source field on File AST blocks, so overriding it here is unnecessary.

• robot: Resolve relative library paths in namespace cache validation (45d8f9f)

  Namespace cache validation failed for files importing libraries via
  relative paths (e.g. ../../resources/libraries/common.py), causing
  unnecessary full rebuilds on every warm start.

  Two issues fixed:

  • validate_namespace_meta now passes the source file's directory as
    base_dir when falling back to get_library_meta/get_variables_meta,
    so relative paths resolve correctly
  • get_library_meta and get_variables_meta initialize import_name
    before the try block to avoid UnboundLocalError when find_library
    or find_variables fails

• robot: Correct check for init.py file in _is_valid_file function (ffad219)

• robot: Add lock for _workspace_languages to prevent race condition (9bf0ee6)

  WeakKeyDictionary is not thread-safe for concurrent read/write.
  Protect all access to _workspace_languages with a dedicated RLock.

Documentation

• news: Add supplementary release note for v2.5.0 (a8c39a3)

• Update release notes for v2.5.0 with (9978a88)

• Add news section to documentation site (7f14925)

  Add a dedicated news section for release announcements with
  auto-generated sidebar (sorted newest-first), content loader,
  and redirect from /news/ to the latest article.

Features

• analyze: Add cache management CLI commands (1421107)

  Add robotcode analyze cache subcommand group with five commands:

  • path: print resolved cache directory
  • info: show cache statistics with per-section breakdown
  • list: list cached entries with glob pattern filtering (-p)
  • clear: remove cached entries by section
  • prune: delete entire .robotcode_cache directory

  Output adapts to the global --format flag (text/json/toml) and
  --no-color mode. Text output uses rich-rendered markdown tables
  when color is enabled, plain aligned tables otherwise.

• analyze: Enable namespace caching by default (d896213)

  Namespace caching speeds up startup for large projects by skipping
  re-analysis of unchanged files. It is now mature enough to be enabled
  by default.

• analyze: Add --cache-namespaces/--no-cache-namespaces CLI option (b050c32)

  Add option to enable/disable caching of fully analyzed namespace data
  to disk. Disabled by default until the cache is fully optimized and
  validated. When enabled, skips re-analysis of unchanged files on
  startup, which can significantly speed up large projects.

  Available as CLI flag (--cache-namespaces/--no-cache-namespaces),
  robot.toml setting (tool.robotcode-analyze.cache.cache_namespaces),
  and VS Code setting (robotcode.analysis.cache.cacheNamespaces).

• analyze: Add collection of unused keywords and variables on the CLI (5734690)

  Add support for collecting unused keyword and variable diagnostics when
  running robotcode analyze code from the command line.

  The feature can be enabled in robot.toml:

  [tool.robotcode-analyze.code]
  collect-unused = true

  or controlled directly per invocation:

  robotcode analyze code --collect-unused
  robotcode analyze code --no-collect-unused

• langserver: Add code completion for Literal type hint values (42ab3a0)

  Keywords with Literal["fast", "slow", "auto"] type hints now show
  their allowed values in the completion list, making it easier to
  discover and select valid argument values without checking the
  keyword documentation.

  Also supports Union types containing Literal, e.g.
  Union[Literal["x", "y"], int].

• language_server: Add json to watched file extensions (74e92b0)

• plugin: Add has_rich property to detect rich availability (4581cc6)

  Fall back to plain-text output in cache CLI commands when the rich
  package is not installed, instead of dumping raw unformatted markdown.

• robot: Add ROBOTCODE_CACHE_DIR env var for cache path override (a778cd5)

  Enable redirecting the analysis cache to a custom directory via the
  ROBOTCODE_CACHE_DIR environment variable. This allows all RobotCode
  tools — CLI commands, analyze runs, and the language server — to
  share the same cache regardless of where it is stored.

  The VS Code extension automatically sets this variable in the
  integrated terminal, so CLI commands find the correct cache
  without any manual setup.

  Cache clearing now operates on the database directly instead of
  removing the directory, preventing errors when multiple processes
  access the cache concurrently.

• robot: Add advisory file locking to SQLite cache (b9351fc)

  Add shared/exclusive advisory file locking (fcntl.flock) to prevent
  prune from deleting a cache database while another process (language
  server, analyze run) is using it.

• robot: Add SQLite cache backend for library and namespace data (edaea47)

  Replace file-based pickle caching with a single SQLite database per
  workspace, consolidating all cache entries into one file instead of
  many individual .pkl files scattered across directories.

• robot: Add namespace disk cache for cold-start acceleration (abf3387)

  Speed up first-time file analysis by caching fully resolved
  namespace results to disk. On subsequent IDE starts, cached
  namespaces are reused instead of re-analyzing every file from
  scratch, significantly reducing the time until diagnostics,
  code completion, and navigation become available.

  The cache is automatically invalidated when source files,
  library dependencies, environment variables, command-line
  variables, language configuration, or the RobotCode version
  change.

• robot: Add ProjectIndex for O(1) workspace-wide reference lookups (6ef90f1)

  Add an incrementally maintained inverse reference index (ProjectIndex)
  scoped per WorkspaceFolder. On each file build, references are updated
  in-place instead of scanning all files. All six reference types are
  supported: keywords, variables, namespace entries, keyword tags,
  testcase tags, and metadata.

• robot: Track tag and metadata references in namespace analysis (6a372fe)

  Add structured reference tracking for tags and metadata during analysis.
  Tags are split into keyword_tag_references and testcase_tag_references
  to reflect their different semantics in Robot Framework (keyword visibility
  vs test selection/reporting). Metadata references track settings-level
  metadata entries by key. All reference keys are normalized for consistent
  lookups. Remove unused TagDefinition class.

• settings: Remove deprecated robocop configuration options (fa2217e)

• vscode: Show "What's New" notification after extension update (7fb2071)

  Display an info notification when the extension version changes,
  linking to the news page on robotcode.io via the built-in Simple Browser.
  Also adds a public "RobotCode: Show What's New" command to the palette.

Performance

• cache: Defer data blob loading in CacheEntry until first access (795c420)

• diagnostics: Remove redundant exists() check in get_resource_meta (5696868)

• diagnostics: Consolidate to single AST model and remove data_only parameter (e2e4cbd)

  This eliminates the second cached AST model per document, saving ~500KB/doc
  in CLI and ~200KB/doc in the Language Server. Releasing the model reference
  after analysis frees an additional ~100-500KB/doc in CLI mode.

• imports: Cache get_module_spec results in ImportsManager (fa83b30)

• robot: Patch RF's variable_not_found to skip slow RecommendationFinder (78a26c3)

  Robot Framework's variable_not_found() calls RecommendationFinder for
  fuzzy "Did you mean...?" suggestions on every unresolved variable. This
  is O(n*m) over all variable candidates and extremely slow for large
  projects (see #587: 30+ min for 375 files).

  RobotCode never uses the recommendation text — all VariableError catch
  sites either ignore the error or use it for unrelated diagnostics.

  The monkey-patch replaces variable_not_found in all 5 RF modules that
  import it (notfound, finders, evaluation, store, init) with a fast
  version that raises VariableError with just the base message.

• robot: Speed up namespace cache loading with source hints and top-level-only imports (1d4ba6b)

  Add resolved_resource_sources to NamespaceData that maps import hint
  keys to resolved file paths. During from_data() re-resolution, these
  hints skip expensive find_resource() filesystem searches when the
  cached path still exists on disk.

  Also limit cached imports to top-level only (recursive imports are
  re-discovered during resolution), replace Path-based normalization
  with string-only os.path calls in imports_manager, and add a hint_key
  property to Import for consistent key computation.

• robot: Fix ArgumentSpec.resolve() caching bug for RobotArgumentSpec (05142c8)

  The RobotArgumentSpec was recreated on every call (100K times) because:

  • hasattr() always returned False with @DataClass(slots=True)
  • Assignment went to a local variable instead of self

  RobotArgumentSpec.init calls: 100K → 1.3K (-98.7%)
  resolve cumtime: 3.93s → 3.29s (-0.64s)
  Warm no-NS total: 30.78s → 29.81s (-0.97s, -3.2%)

• robot: Replace pathlib with os.path in file resolution (f3118bd)

  Replace pathlib.Path operations with os.path string functions
  in robot_path.py for significantly faster file resolution:

  • Use os.path.join/abspath/isfile/isdir instead of Path objects
  • Cache validated sys.path entries lazily (_get_valid_sys_path)
  • Separate basedir check from sys.path iteration
  • Introduce _PathLike type alias for cleaner signatures
  • Fix is_fifo() bug: use os.path.isfile() for init.py check

  Warm namespace-cache scenario: 19.30s -> 13.84s (-28.3%).
  Pathlib calls reduced by 78-100%, posix.stat calls by 35%.

• robot: Cache KeywordMatcher and add dict-index to KeywordStore (5d21baf)

  • Cache KeywordMatcher on KeywordDoc via lazy-init _matcher slot,
    eliminating 7.5M redundant instantiations per analysis run
  • Add dict-index (_index + _embedded) to KeywordStore for O(1)
    keyword lookup by normalized name; linear scan only for embedded
    keywords
  • Add getstate/setstate to KeywordDoc and KeywordStore to
    exclude transient fields (_matcher, _index, _embedded, parent,
    _hash_value, _stable_id) from pickle serialization
  • Restore parent references in LibraryDoc.setstate via
    _update_keywords after deserialization
  • Remove unused nosave metadata from argument_definitions, parent,
    and keyword_doc fields
  • Fix Application.keyboard_interrupt to use self.exit() for
    consistent shutdown behavior

  Measured improvement (cProfile, 1065 Robot files):

  • Warm no-NS: 37.46s -> 29.25s (-22%)
  • Cold no-NS: 42.94s -> 33.39s (-22%)
  • Keyword matching: ~9.0s -> ~0.5s (-94%)
  • Function calls: 118M -> 81M (-31%)

• robot: Optimize dataclass identity for ProjectIndex caching (deedd7b)

  Prepare VariableDefinition, KeywordDoc, and LibraryDoc for efficient
  use as dictionary keys in the upcoming ProjectIndex disk cache and
  cross-process worker communication.

Refactor

• cache: Optimize SqliteDataCache with lazy deserialization and per-section tables (eeec613)

  Replace single cache_entries table with per-section tables (libdoc,
  variables, resource, namespace) for better query performance.

  Introduce CacheEntry with lazy meta/data deserialization — data blobs
  are only unpickled on cache hit, avoiding expensive deserialization on
  meta mismatch.

  Move version checking from per-entry meta_version field to DB-level
  app_version parameter. On version mismatch all tables are dropped and
  recreated automatically.

  Simplify cache API from 3 methods (cache_data_exists, read_cache_data,
  save_cache_data) to 2 (read_entry, save_entry), reducing DB
  round-trips from 3 to 1 for reads and 2 to 1 for writes.

  Remove filepath_base property (adler32 hash-based keys) from all
  metadata classes — cache keys now use source paths or library names
  directly.

• diagnostics: Extract _run_in_subprocess and _save_import_cache helpers (0c347fd)

  • Unify duplicated ProcessPoolExecutor lifecycle from
    _get_library_libdoc and _get_variables_libdoc into _run_in_subprocess
  • Unify duplicated cache save logic into _save_import_cache

• diagnostics: Deduplicate and optimize metadata classes in imports_manager (a0cb4c6)

  • Extract _collect_library_mtimes() to unify duplicated mtime collection
    from get_library_meta and get_variables_meta, using os.walk instead of
    Path.rglob for better performance
  • Extract _matches_any_pattern() to unify triplicated pattern matching
  • Add slots=True to LibraryMetaData, RobotFileMeta, and NamespaceMetaData
  • Move mtime collection into dataclass constructors to avoid post-init mutation
  • Remove unused itertools import

• jsonrpc2: Harden resource lifecycle without del (5cb7bb7)

  • remove del-based resource cleanup from server, debugger client, and protocol
  • move shutdown to explicit close/close_async paths
  • make JsonRPCServer.close wait for server shutdown when safe
  • add best-effort weakref finalizers for forgotten cleanup without noisy warnings
  • unify runtime and finalizer bookkeeping into shared state objects

• robot: Remove unnecessary type casting in CacheEntry (c4eb160)

• robot: Optimize RF_VERSION checks with module-level dispatch (eec1627)

  • Remove redundant _ROBOT_VERSION alias in semantic_tokens.py
  • Remove always-true RF >= 5.0 guards (minimum supported version)
  • Use conditional class-level property/method definitions for
    is_private and is_reserved in library_doc.py
  • Add _RF7_PLUS module-level bool for BDD keyword search hot path
  • Move ExceptHeader/WhileHeader imports to top-level (always available)

• robot: Replace Namespace getter methods with read-only properties (127ad65)

• robot: Extract Namespace into DTO with event-driven invalidation (4f37419)

  Split the monolithic Namespace class into focused modules to reduce
  complexity and improve maintainability. The Namespace is now a pure data
  container built by NamespaceBuilder, with dedicated modules for import
  resolution, AST analysis, variable scoping, and scope trees.

• Introduce RF_VERSION constant and remove RF < 5.0 dead code (02cf495)

  • Add module-level RF_VERSION constant to robotcode.robot.utils,
    resolved once at import time instead of repeated lru_cache lookups
  • Remove dead code paths for Robot Framework < 5.0 (no longer supported),
    including the internal tidy-based formatter and obsolete version branches
  • Replace all ~134 get_robot_version() call sites across 27 files with
    the RF_VERSION constant

Testing

• namespace: Ensure mtime differs on coarse resolution filesystems (c2b6a79)
• Add unit tests for SqliteDataCache backend functionality (f315426)
• Improve resource file modification simulation for validation (a3107fd)
• Improve mtime simulation for file modification in namespace validation (9a58278)