Glitchy Behavior Pinegrow Pro and VSCode Live Sync Extension

General Bug Reports
1

Hello,

I want to know if anybody there is using Pinegrow with VSCode Live Sync Extension.

I have been pulling my hair for over two weeks, losing parts of code, and doing wrong editing due to lack of sync between the two.

Every time I save in VSCode it pops up a message saying they got disconnected and ask for a port configuration different than port 40000. If I do the edits on the PG side the cursor can even jump somewhere else while you are typing causing you to type in random sections of the file.

I tried different port settings like 50000, re-starting the programs, re-installing them both, uninstalling all other VScode Extensions, and installing brand new versions of both applications on a brand new computer and the behavior doesn’t change.

I am working on a Windows environment, and the problem won’t show right away or constantly, but shows randomly after a while you start working with regular HTML and CSS files.

NO virus either here!

Support has been trying to help me but they haven’t been able to replicate the fault.

I am wondering if this is happening to somebody else or simply nobody is using VSCode Extension or setup???

I still can hardly believe that this problem is on my side or files.

Your Input will be appreciated!!!

2

So sorry for your troubles. I’m on a mac and finally have Live Server working pretty well. But it was problematic in the beginning, then one day all was well. My only issue is that it opens my main site html if I’m in css or js— unless I have the cursor in the html in VSC I’m working on.

3

Hello Kathleen,

Thanks for the reply,

Actually, I was very curious as a few minutes ago I was checking the feed of the community page, and my post is no longer viewable,
I don’t know if it is only from my end.

About the VSCode extension, I really think it has a glitch but I am working on the Windows platform, and it might be possible that they work differently depending on the operating system.

I am afraid, that not many people are using it, or probably they gave up and left it behind. For me, VSCode is a powerful code editor that pairs beautifully with Pinegrow, and I would love to see them working flawlessly, but probably that would be only in a perfect world. :slightly_smiling_face:

I will check later and be patient as they said they weren’t able to replicate the problem.

Thanks anyway.

Alberto

4

I’m always having glitches. Eventually they magically disappear, for no reason that I can figure. Hopefully your live server’s will, too.

5

@arpagrow @kat

First of all, to prevent this discussion from digressing, it is necessary to distinguish between the general problems of web development with Pinegrow, which due to the completeness of its possibilities requires a good technical knowledge and a significant human investment (clearly, it is not a page builder), and the possible technical problems of the application.

For the latter, we always make it a point to fix the problems that are reported to the technical support, especially when their existence compromises the proper functioning of a much appreciated feature of Pinegrow.

Each technical problem reported, if not noticed by the support operator, is tested by 5 different people within the Pinegrow team who - as a reminder - use Pinegrow more than 8 hours a day to create documents, test features etc… In short, the application is permanently running on our macOS, Windows, and Linux computers.

Out of the number of Pinegrow licenses in circulation, when a problem is reported to us once by a single user, and we are unable to reproduce it, our first instinct is to suspect an external cause.

We try to ask the right questions because it is difficult for us to know precisely what happens on our customers’ computers, the precise sequence of actions that lead to the problem, the systematic reproducibility or not of the problem, the nature of the projects edited (simple HTML, a lot of JS etc…), the network parameters, the applications used simultaneously on the computer etc…etc…

In the present case, we are currently trying to reproduce the same issue but currently we can’t find any technical explanation from Pinegrow or from our extension.

6

I’m having a pretty awful experience with this too. Sometimes it works flawlessly, other times there are severe glitches that mean I just can’t trust it fully and have to constantly check it’s syncing.

If I make a change in Pinegrow the change will pull through fine in VS Code at the moment but often with a ton of spaces added between CSS rules that I then have to remove in VS Code. I had it working on my Mac where it would auto pull through changes from VS Code into Pinegrow without having to click ‘reload the page’ each and every time, this doesn’t seem to work on Windows, even with the Auto Reload option enabled.

I can’t work out why (and this was on both Operating Systems) there are often notifications from VS Code saying it’s no longer connected to Pinegrow, even though it’s still appearing to pull in the changes. When using on the Mac changes made in Pinegrow would also save automatically in VS Code, on Windows I’m having to manually save the file in VS Code, which then requires me to refresh the page in Pinegrow. It’s all a bit clunky and very unpredictable and like @arpagrow has led me to lose parts of my code. This is running PG 7.1 and VS Code 1.74.3.

On the note of losing code Pinegrow is also absolutely awful at undoing and redoing changes, it seems really good at skipping 10 steps and for example only undoing what you did in the HTML, not the stylesheet etc. I don’t know if I’m doing something wrong but all I can say it’s far from intuitive and far from the way most software UIs work when you hit undo, VS Code included.

1 Like
7

One thing that I have noticed is that If I have VSCode open and I make changes in the Pinegrow editor those changes jump all over the place. I’ve absolutely no idea why or what might be the trigger but it only happens when VSCode has the same file open.

1 Like
8

I’ve also had inconsistent behavior when editing a file in VS Code and Pinegrow at the same time. I haven’t quite narrowed down the specific antecedents, so I just try not to open the file I’m actively working on in both VSC and Pinegrow.

9

@adamslowe Yes that my current preferred approach. Ostensibly I write the code in VSCode and eventually do a Save All in PG. I would love to be able to figure out what triggers this behaviour but I have a practical and pragmatic workaround so I’ll live with it.

10

Here is an example of what happens

and in somewhat clearer detail

Wish I knew why.

11

I can also confirm that the VScode Pinegrow Plugin acts unexpectedly. I also, have not be able to find exactly what causes all the issues, but it may be related to using SCSS. At any rate, I find that CSS cannot be edited in VScode reliably (so I’m forced to use the inferior PG internal editor for all CSS). I find that updating PHP files works well. I have not tried a lot of editing with HTML, so I can’t report on that.

One thing I do know is that you need to restart PG several times a day (Windows) in order to avoid all the bugs. If I try to run PG for more than 6hrs or so, the bugs start to stack up all over the place, but fortunately, it’s quick to save all and restart. I try to report bugs as I find them but don’t have time to report and investigate them all, so I’ve just learned to live with them and know that a restart of PG will usually alleviate any unexpected behavior in general.

1 Like
12

Looks like there is a problem with Windows paths in the PG VSC extension. I implemented a change that makes that part more robust. Please update the extension to 0.0.8 and report back here.

3 Likes
13

@matjaz First impressions are good, seems to be working in a much more stable manner. Thanks.

3 Likes
14

That sound great Matjaz,

Would the Extension fix help the Code Editor access from the main menu as well?
There is a problem closely related to it,

Let me explain myself,

Starting from the point that there are two other different access areas within PG,
to edit the code**,** the Code Editor, and the Elements Code Panel.

Editing the code still misbehaving from the code editor,

image.png

I frequently experiment unresponsiveness, or
If it responds, changes don’t get saved, this happens constantly.

Making changes from the Elements Code Panel doesn’t cause any problems,

image.png

but it only gives me access to the specific element o line of code selected on the page.

I don’t know if it is me doing something wrong, but it happens with any type of HTML, CSS Project
that I open in Pine Grow.

Alberto Ramirez.

15

@arpagrow Alberto, the VS extension change does not directly affect the built-in code editor. Please tell me more about the problem:

  • Does it happen only with specific type of HTML edits?
  • Does it happen even with simple projects (such as our templates)?
  • Are you on Windows?
  • What are the file paths to the project (shown in the window title in PG app)?

Thanks!

16

@matjaz I have one new theme I’ve been working on creating, and it was the only one that I’ve made so far that actually allows you to update SCSS in VScode (it took me 2years to figure this out), but since the new update to 0.0.8 my setup no longer works at all. I’ve been able to revert to the last version of the plugin, and that is still working, but it would really take my work to a new level if this plugin was 100% reliable someday. -Thanks!

1 Like
17

@jonroc what happens? Can you send us the project to support? Are you using the built-in SASS compiler?

Let’s try to get this done :slight_smile:

2 Likes
18

Sounds good… my new starter theme is still in development, but I’ll send support what I have. Yes, I’m using the built-in SASS compiler (I think the SASS version that the compiler is using is out of date b/c I can’t get some SASS features to work with it like @use, which is the modern alternative to the deprecating @import)