Using local dev tools

2018-07-21

I was asked by Gergő, a developer, if you can use your own editor with Boomla.

Short answer

Not now, yes in the past and future.

Long answer

We had support for using your local development tools in the past, and we will support it in the future. Because everyone seemed to be happy with our web based IDE, we decided to pull the plug on the local build to help us move faster.

Windows users: we have a built-in SFTP server for you, that maps the Boomla filesystem onto a POSIX compatible format. Currently it is only available in the local binary, which is not released. Let me know if you wanted to use it.

Mac and Linux users: We had FUSE integration in the past, which turned out to be buggy in some weird edge cases. I had to either fix or remove it. As nobody was using it, I removed it for now. It’s definitely coming back in the future. For the time being, I rather add features people care about. Let me know if you wanted to use it.

Unexpected

Interestingly, I was sure I wanted to work with my local tools, and only built the IDE for others. Over time, I gradually stopped using my local dev tools, to my biggest surprize. Using the web IDE is just faster. For example, file drag-and-drop is way simpler in the web based IDE, as Boomla files are stored in order, not alphabetically.

So, if you are in my old shoes and want to use your own dev tools, you may want to give the web based IDE a try regardless. And if you have ideas on how to improve it, go ahead, fork it and send me a pull request.


Cheers,

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