Marketplace-ready: F5 with no launch.json, a Registers view, and the debug adapter from the release

[w1ne]

Takes the extension from "only works if you built labwired-core from source" to a .vsix that installs and debugs a chip.

The debug adapter was unreachable

findDapPath walked five levels of parent directories looking for target/release/labwired-dap. That path exists only on a machine that has built labwired-core. For anyone installing from the Marketplace, F5 could never have worked.

Deleted. Both binaries resolve through one cascade in cli.ts (setting → bundled → PATH → downloaded release), sharing a single download, guarded so a Run and an F5 racing on first use cannot both fetch it. Depends on labwired-core#686, which puts labwired-dap in the release tarball — it had never shipped in one.

F5 needed a hand-written launch.json

No provideDebugConfigurations existed, so F5 in a fresh project opened a picker and then a JSON file to fill in by hand. Now F5 synthesises a config, resolving program from .labwired/lab.yaml or by finding the built ELF.

src/firmware.ts does the discovery, and its rules exist because the obvious implementation picks the wrong file:

rule	why
check ELF magic, not the filename	target/release/ also holds build scripts and xtasks
skip .d / .rlib / .bin siblings	they sit right beside the firmware
cross-compiled outranks a newer host binary	on an embedded project, a binary under target/release with no target triple is almost never the firmware

Two package.json fixes were required for any of that to work: "*" activation removed (it activated on every window for every user), and program is no longer required — it was, which makes VS Code reject exactly the zero-config launch this adds.

See all registers

New Registers view: CPU core registers plus decoded peripheral registers, searchable, with values that changed since the last stop highlighted — a tree is the wrong shape for the question people actually ask while stepping.

Naming is architecture-specific (Cortex-M R0..R12/SP/LR/PC, RISC-V x0..x31/pc), so it renders whatever the adapter reports rather than assuming a set. Peripherals with no register schema are shown as "simulated natively — no register names available" rather than hidden: the peripheral exists and is being simulated, only its names are unknown.

The repo had no CI, and adding it immediately paid for itself

Nothing compiled the extension, nothing ran its tests, and src/test/suite/index.ts globs from its own directory — so out/test/unit/** was unreachable and the unit tests already in the tree ran nowhere.

The new workflow caught three bugs of mine that would otherwise have shipped:

1. A dialog was holding the launch open. The "no firmware found" path awaited showErrorMessage, so resolveDebugConfiguration did not return until the user clicked. A real user would have seen a debug session that appeared to hang.
2. A test was passing by accident — "Commands should be registered" relied on "*" having eagerly activated the extension, and never activated anything itself.
3. The events test's dependency stub was incomplete, so wiring the new panel into the refresh fan-out crashed it.

The E2E test now skips with its reason printed when the adapter/firmware artifacts are absent, instead of sitting through a 60-second timeout and reporting a failure that says nothing about the code.

Marketplace metadata

Icon (the real LabWired mark), repository/bugs/homepage/keywords/galleryBanner, categories, a CHANGELOG that did not exist, and a README rewritten around install → F5. release.yml publishes on a vX.Y.Z tag, runs both suites first, fails if the tag disagrees with package.json, and still attaches the .vsix when VSCE_PAT is absent.

Verification

npm run test:unit   14 passing
npm test            21 passing, 1 pending
vsce package        216.57 KB — icon, changelog, out/extension.js all present
code --install-extension  →  w1ne.labwired-vscode@0.13.0

Installed manifest confirmed: intended activation events, 15 commands, no required: program.

Not done, and not claimed: the circuit webview. labwired#1033 landed the scoped @labwired/ui/canvas entry and systemToDiagram it needs, and the DAP already emits live board_io pin state, but the panel itself is not built — topologyPanel.ts still renders its own SVG.

Blocked: the w1ne Marketplace publisher does not exist. Create it at https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/manage and add a VSCE_PAT repo secret scoped to Marketplace → Manage; tagging v0.13.0 then publishes.