Bonsai - Visual Reactive Programming

This is the main repository for the Bonsai visual programming language. It contains source code for the compiler, IDE, and standard library.

With Bonsai you tell your computer what to do not through long listings of text but by manipulating graphical elements in a workflow. Bonsai is built on top of Rx.NET, and like in Rx, workflow elements in Bonsai represent asynchronous streams of data called Observables which can be connected together to perform complex operations.

Building from Source

Windows

1. Install Visual Studio 2022. The Community Edition is available free of charge for open-source projects. Make sure the .NET Desktop Development workload is selected when running the installer.
2. Open Bonsai.sln and select Build > Build Solution from the VS menu.

Installer

1. Install the Wix Toolset build tools version 3.11 or greater.
2. From Visual Studio menu, select Extensions > Manage Extensions and install the WiX Toolset Visual Studio 2022 Extension.

Debugging

The new bootstrapper logic makes use of isolated child processes to manage local editor extensions. To make it easier to debug the entire process tree we recommend installing the Child Process Debugging Power Tool extension.

Getting Help

You can find the Bonsai community in a few places:

• GitHub - Announcements, general discussion and Q&A
• Discord - General discussion

Contributing

1. Create an issue describing what you would like to improve, or pick an existing issue.
2. Install Git.
3. Fork Bonsai.
4. Create a new branch in your fork called issue-### where ### is the issue number.
5. Make small incremental changes to your branch to resolve the issue.
6. Create a new PR into the main repository and tag a reviewer.

Documentation

The Bonsai documentation is open to community contributions. If you are interested in helping us to improve it, please take a look at our docs repo.