Can't get the scope inspector to recognise comments

Question

I've been trying to write my own syntax highlighting extension for the rules we use in a document composition tool.

I've been able to get most of it working okay but I just can't get the comments to be recognised by the scope inspector.

I removed all the other working code from the tmLanguage file to rule out conflicts and am left with the following

ote-rules.tmLanguage.json

{
    "scopeName": "source.ote-rules",
    "patterns": [{
        "include": "#expression"
    }],
    "repository": {
        "expression": {
            "patterns": [
                {
                    "include": "#comments-ote"
                }
            ]
        },
        "comments-ote": {
            "patterns": [{
                    "include": "#comments-block"
                },
                {
                    "include": "#comments-line"
                }
            ],
            "comments-line": {
                "match": "\\/\\/.*?$",
                "name": "comment.line.double-slash.ote-rules"
            },
            "comments-block": {
                "begin": "\\/\\*",
                "end": "\\*\\/",
                "beginCaptures":{
                    "0":{"name":"punctuation.definition.comment.ote-rules"}
                },
                "endCaptures":{
                    "0":{"name":"punctuation.definition.comment.ote-rules"}
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

The file I'm trying to match on is a plain text file (*.txt extension) and comments are either line comments with a double forward slash or block comments which begin and end with /* and */ respectively

test text file.txt

// just some comment text 
  // indented comment
//
// left the above line empty apart from slashes
/*
inline block comment 
*/

When I look at the text above with the scope inspector it's recoginising that it's from source.ote-rules but is showing the token type as 'other'

I've checked the regex's on rubular.com and they seem to work on the samples I've shown so what have I missed?

Answer 1

The problem is that patterns included with # references have to be directly in the "repository", but you nested them into "comments-ote". It simply doesn't find them.

Also, you probably want to give your "comments-block" a scope name so it's highlighted as a comment, such as "name": "comment.block.ote-rules".

{
    "scopeName": "source.ote-rules",
    "patterns": [
        {
            "include": "#expression"
        }
    ],
    "repository": {
        "expression": {
            "patterns": [
                {
                    "include": "#comments-ote"
                }
            ]
        },
        "comments-ote": {
            "patterns": [
                {
                    "include": "#comments-block"
                },
                {
                    "include": "#comments-line"
                }
            ]
        },
        "comments-line": {
            "match": "\\/\\/.*?$",
            "name": "comment.line.double-slash.ote-rules"
        },
        "comments-block": {
            "begin": "\\/\\*",
            "end": "\\*\\/",
            "beginCaptures": {
                "0": {
                    "name": "punctuation.definition.comment.ote-rules"
                }
            },
            "endCaptures": {
                "0": {
                    "name": "punctuation.definition.comment.ote-rules"
                }
            },
            "name": "comment.block.ote-rules"
        }
    }
}

Note: you don't need to use "include", you can also specify the patterns directly within "patterns":

"comments-ote": {
    "patterns": [
        {
            "match": "\\/\\/.*?$",
            "name": "comment.line.double-slash.ote-rules"
        },
        {
            "begin": "\\/\\*",
            "end": "\\*\\/",
            "beginCaptures": {
                "0": {
                    "name": "punctuation.definition.comment.ote-rules"
                }
            },
            "endCaptures": {
                "0": {
                    "name": "punctuation.definition.comment.ote-rules"
                }
            },
            "name": "comment.block.ote-rules"
        }
    ]
}