Syntax highlighting

markopolo
Contributor

Did they take away syntax highlighting in 10.36? Just upgraded and can no longer view color coding in my scripts. Also, there only two options now in the Script Contents drop-down - Monokai and Ruby Blue (neither of which have highlighting).

12 REPLIES 12

Bol
Valued Contributor

 

While viewing your script in;

Settings - Computer Management - Scripts

Press the edit button, you will see an additional drop down menu appear which you can then select script type.

 

Bol_0-1647323886238.png

 

mm2270
Legendary Contributor III

Sorry @Bol but that isn't a solution. The truth is, yes, Jamf inexplicably removed almost all of the previous formatting and syntax highlighting in the latest Jamf Pro version. I can't even pretend to know why. The options in the drop down show Shell/Bash, Python and Perl, and no matter which of those you select, you only get Default (plain black text on white background), Monokai, dark grey background w/ white text, or Ruby Blue (dark blue background w/ white text). NONE of these have any syntax highlighting.

I'm not one to typically advocate for this, but I think we should complain loudly about this to Jamf. I have no clue why such a useful feature in the built in script editor would have been removed. Makes no sense at all. The built in script editor already had unfortunate limitations before, and now it's almost useless. About all it's good for is copy/paste an already written script into it and save. Forget about doing any editing in the Jamf Pro console from now on, unless or until they address this.

sdagley
Esteemed Contributor II

Sometimes I really wonder what kind of testing/review Jamf does on changes because based on regressions in fundamental features (e.g. script editing in the past several releases, and the Back button being non-functional for multiple screens with 10.35.0) I'm not getting the sense of a rigorous process.

Bol
Valued Contributor

I may of missed it but slightly on the topic of the back button, I noticed going through history in Safari it hasn't for a few releases actually showed the policy / device name in the title. So now it's a case of going back to the most recent 'Mobile Device' or 'Policy' in history to find what I was working on. 

Small but kind of annoying when you are on the fly with several jobs on the go to find your way without a mammoth of tabs left in your wake.

sdagley
Esteemed Contributor II

Yes, the new tab naming behavior, and that closing a tab when you have many open often results in every other tab suddenly showing a login prompt, gives me the feeling that the developers making those changes, and possibly their managers approving them, do not have actual experience using Jamf Pro. That is definitely not a feeling I want to have.

Bol
Valued Contributor

@sdagley wrote:

Yes, the new tab naming behavior, and that closing a tab when you have many open often results in every other tab suddenly showing a login prompt, gives me the feeling that the developers making those changes, and possibly their managers approving them, do not have actual experience using Jamf Pro. That is definitely not a feeling I want to have.


This!! Thank you for mentioning that, I had forgot and thought I was going insane!

Bol
Valued Contributor

@mm2270 wrote:

Sorry @Bol but that isn't a solution. The truth is, yes, Jamf inexplicably removed almost all of the previous formatting and syntax highlighting in the latest Jamf Pro version. I can't even pretend to know why. The options in the drop down show Shell/Bash, Python and Perl, and no matter which of those you select, you only get Default (plain black text on white background), Monokai, dark grey background w/ white text, or Ruby Blue (dark blue background w/ white text). NONE of these have any syntax highlighting.

I'm not one to typically advocate for this, but I think we should complain loudly about this to Jamf. I have no clue why such a useful feature in the built in script editor would have been removed. Makes no sense at all. The built in script editor already had unfortunate limitations before, and now it's almost useless. About all it's good for is copy/paste an already written script into it and save. Forget about doing any editing in the Jamf Pro console from now on, unless or until they address this.


I didn't think to comment on whether I liked it or not (which I don't!) but I thought that was a way around the changes. Thanks for the correction. Is there any official documentation on this change as I couldn't find any, it would be something quite strange if it wasn't at least declared to users as something that was coming or why it needed to be done...

mm2270
Legendary Contributor III

I haven't seen any explanation for the changes either. If there is one, I'd sure like to see it. If this was another oversight in the code and it will be corrected, then I'll be happy for that at least.

But yeah, changes like this, when they just put them out there with nothing stated beforehand really annoy me. Maybe there's some logical reason for the change, though I can't imagine what that would be.

Maybe someone from Jamf can chime in here on it? Not probable, but I can ask I guess.

Bol
Valued Contributor

Totally agree with you here. 

Out of curiosity, are you on-prem install and upgraded or had this change during Jamf Cloud change window. Apologies if you already mentioned.

We are on-prem and noticed the change with 10.36. But what's interesting is after posting this the other day, I went back in and syntax highlighting is there now - although still only the Monokai and Ruby Blue options. And I forgot to also mention the editor window, which is ridiculously tiny now and only shows about 14 lines of code (at default zoom level). That in itself pretty much makes the script editor useless IMO.

Bol
Valued Contributor

I noticed the same with lines displayed in the editor, I do recall this has been an issue for some time when reading through the known issues a while back. On-prem here also and noticed during upgrade from 10.35 -> 10.36.1

Bol
Valued Contributor
@Bol wrote:

I noticed going through history in Safari it hasn't for a few releases actually showed the policy / device name in the title. So now it's a case of going back to the most recent 'Mobile Device' or 'Policy' in history to find what I was working on. 

Small but kind of annoying when you are on the fly with several jobs on the go to find your way without a mammoth of tabs left in your wake.


Had to come back and correct, this now is fixed as of 10.36.1. History is correctly showing object / policy name etc. Nice