rojo: A Rust repository from Validark

Rojo is a flexible multi-tool designed for creating robust Roblox projects.

It's designed for power users who want to use the best tools available for building games, libraries, and plugins.

Features

Rojo lets you:

Work on scripts from the filesystem, in your favorite editor
Version your place, library, or plugin using Git or another VCS
Sync JSON-format models from the filesystem into your game

Later this year, Rojo will be able to:

Sync rbxmx models between the filesystem and Roblox Studio
Package projects into rbxmx files from the command line

Installation

Rojo has two components:

The server, a binary written in Rust
The plugin, a Roblox Studio plugin written in Lua

It's important that the plugin and server are compatible. The plugin will show errors in the Roblox Studio Output window if there is a version mismatch.

To install the server, either:

If you have Rust installed, use cargo install rojo
Or, download a pre-built Windows binary from the GitHub releases page

To install the plugin, either:

Install the plugin from the Roblox plugin page.
- This gives you less control over what version you install -- you will always have the latest version.
Or, download the latest release from the GitHub releases section and install it into your Roblox plugins folder
- You can open this folder by clicking the "Plugins Folder" button from the Plugins toolbar in Roblox Studio

Server Usage

For more help, use rojo help.

New Project

Create a new folder, then use rojo init inside that folder to initialize an empty project:

mkdir my-new-project
cd my-new-project

rojo init

Rojo will create an empty project file named rojo.json in the directory.

The default project file is:

{
  "name": "my-new-project",
  "servePort": 8000,
  "partitions": {}
}

Start Dev Server

To start the Rojo dev server, use:

rojo serve

The tool will tell you whether it found an existing project. You should then be able to connect and use the project from within Roblox Studio!

Migrating an Existing Roblox Project

Bi-directional script syncing is on the roadmap for Rojo this year, but isn't implemented.

In the mean-time, manually migrating scripts is probably the best route forward.

Syncing into Roblox

In order to sync code into Roblox, you'll need to add one or more partitions to your configuration. A partition tells Rojo how to map directories on your filesystem to Roblox objects.

Each entry in the partitions map has a unique name, a filesystem path, and the full name of the Roblox object to sync into.

For example, if you want to map your src directory to an object named My Cool Game in ReplicatedStorage, you could use this configuration:

{
  "name": "rojo",
  "servePort": 8000,
  "partitions": {
    "game": {
      "path": "src",
      "target": "ReplicatedStorage.My Cool Game"
    }
  }
}

The path parameter is relative to the project file.

The target parameter is a path to a Roblox object to link the partition to, starting at game. If any objects don't exist along the way, Rojo will try to create them.

Any objects in a partition may be wiped away by Rojo after syncing! If this is not desired, use multiple, smaller partitions.

Run rojo serve in the directory containing this project, then press the "Sync In" or "Toggle Polling" buttons in the Roblox Studio plugin to sync into your game.

Sync Details

The structure of files and diectories on the filesystem are preserved when syncing into game.

Creation of Roblox instances follows a simple set of rules. The first rule that matches the file name is chosen:

File Name	Instance Type	Notes
`*.server.lua`	`Script`	`Source` will contain the file's contents
`*.client.lua`	`LocalScript`	`Source` will contain the file's contents
`*.lua`	`ModuleScript`	`Source` will contain the file's contents
`*.model.json`	Varies	See the example below
`*`	`StringValue`	`Value` will contain the file's contents

Any directories on the filesystem will turn into Folder objects.

Any directory containing one of these files will instead be a ModuleScript, Script, LocalScript containing the directory's contents:

init.lua
init.server.lua
init.client.lua

For example, this file tree:

my-game
- init.client.lua
- foo.lua

Will turn into these instances in Roblox:

my-game (LocalScript with source from my-game/init.client.lua)
- foo (ModuleScript with source from my-game/foo.lua)

*.model.json files are a way to represent simple Roblox instances on the filesystem until rbxmx and rbxlx support is implemented in Rojo.

This feature is intended for small instances, like RemoteEvent or *Value objects.

JSON Model files are strict, with every property being required. They look like this:

{
  "Name": "hello",
  "ClassName": "Model",
  "Children": [
    {
      "Name": "Some Part",
      "ClassName": "Part",
      "Children": [],
      "Properties": {}
    },
    {
      "Name": "Some StringValue",
      "ClassName": "StringValue",
      "Children": [],
      "Properties": {
        "Value": {
          "Type": "String",
          "Value": "Hello, world!"
        }
      }
    }
  ],
  "Properties": {}
}

Inspiration

There are lots of other tools that sync scripts into Roblox or provide other tools for working with Roblox places.

Here are a few, if you're looking for alternatives or supplements to Rojo:

I also have a couple tools that Rojo intends to replace:

rbxfs, which has been deprecated by Rojo
rbxpacker, which is still useful

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome!

All pull requests are run against a test suite on Travis CI. That test suite should always pass!

License

Rojo is available under the terms of the MIT license. See LICENSE.md for details.

Validark/rojo