Program File Extensions

[Turgut Guneysu]

Hello john,

I was organizing my microBlocks program directory and noticed that there are files with GPP and UBP extensions.

Is UBP a new type of extension?

All my previous programs had GPP extensions.

When I load a GPP file and save it it becomes a UBP file.

[John Maloney]

Yes, the file format changed in June. Major difference are (a) UBP files retain the structure of user code + imported libraries rather than merging everything together as before and (b) UBP files are now human readable text files rather than binary .zip files. Background: Since MicroBlocks is built with GP, the old GPP files were in GP’s project format. As you’ve seen, you can migrate GPP projects to UBP ones but – as with most such evolutions – older versions of MicroBlocks can’t read the new UBP format.

This is one of the big transitions we wanted to get done before announcing that MicroBlocks is no longer “alpha”.

Another big feature is a garbage collected memory manager that will support a richer set of list and string operations. That’s coming later this fall. Stay tuned!