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Linux Development for Contributors

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Jason San Jose edited this page Jul 30, 2013 · 59 revisions

Introduction

Brackets officially supports Mac and Windows. However, we're working on adding Linux support with the help of our open source community. If you're an end user that just wants to try out Brackets on Linux, please be aware that many features are missing or partially implemented.

To be clear, if you are NOT an extension developer and NOT planning to contribute to brackets-shell, please visit (TBD landing page) to download an experimental build of Brackets. Please review the release notes for known issues.

Development Environment Setup

Required Setup for brackets-shell and brackets

IMPORTANT: This setup script only works for 32-bit Linux. 64-bit support is in progress (Use jasonsanjose/linux-sprint-28 branch. See https://github.com/adobe/brackets-shell/pull/288). On master developers have already reported issues with this script on 64-bit Linux. DO NOT ATTEMPT a 64-bit install from master use jasonsanjose/linux-sprint-28.

These instructions will download the Git repositories for brackets-shell and brackets, download required dependencies, compile the native shell, create and install a debian package, then run Brackets ( /usr/bin/brackets points to /usr/lib/brackets/Brackets).

  1. Fork brackets and fork brackets-shell
  2. Create a top level folder to contain the Brackets git repositories
  3. In a terminal window, cd to the folder from the previous step and run the following command
# TODO update when https://github.com/adobe/brackets-shell/pull/288 is merged (branch jasonsanjose/linux-sprint-28)
wget https://gist.github.com/jasonsanjose/5514813/raw/e2e688f0e5151b93a2f2c17c93436bac13d32f35/setup.sh; chmod +x setup.sh; bash setup.sh; rm setup.sh
  1. You'll be prompted for your GitHub user name to clone your fork of the repositories
  2. Respond to sudo password prompts when requested

ATTENTION This setup script will point your git origin to your own fork, then add a remote upstreamand point to the upstream/master branch in the main git repository. Assuming you're here to contribute to Brackets, you will want to point to your fork later on. This setup script automates the fork and upstream setup instructions here.

Cache Location

# cache root
~/.Brackets

# browser cache, local storage, etc.
~/.Brackets/cef_data

# extensions
~/.Brackets/extensions/user

Extension Development

The extension development workflow is the same as Mac and Windows. Please refer to How to hack on Brackets and How to write extensions. Please note that the extension location on Linux is ~/.Brackets/extensions/user.

Tested Distributions

Contributors: If you are willing to test other Linux distributions please add your results here

Distribution Version Issues
Ubuntu 12.04 32-bit None
Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit Use jasonsanjose/linux-sprint-28 branch. See https://github.com/adobe/brackets-shell/pull/288
Mint 15 64-bit Use jasonsanjose/linux-sprint-28 branch. See https://github.com/adobe/brackets-shell/pull/288
LMDE(*) Debian Testing 32 bit None
Arch 32/64-bit Not tested / None - (Package: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/brackets-git)

(*) Linux Mint Debian Edition

Building brackets-shell

TODO update after https://github.com/adobe/brackets-shell/pull/288
* Replace `make` with `grunt build`

The setup script will automatically create /path/to/brackets-shell/Makefile. If you're only making changes to C++ code, just run make and the binaries will be in /path/to/brackets-shell/out/Release.

When adding new files or changing the build configuration, you'll need to make modifications to the GYP configuration files (either appshell.gyp.txt or common.gypi). After making changes, you'll need to generate a new Makefile. To do this, run:

gyp --depth .

Packaging Brackets

TODO update after https://github.com/adobe/brackets-shell/pull/288

To build a debian package for installation on Debian/Ubuntu distributions, use the `grunt installer` build task. This tasks copies over both the binaries and the www source and creates a debian pacakge, e.g. installer/linux/Brackets Sprint 28.deb.

On Mac and Windows we would use the grunt installer task to build an installer. However, we haven't updated all our Grunt tasks for Linux yet. In the meantime, you can do the following to copy the www source and binaries into a debian package

cd /path/to/brackets-shell

# copy shell binaries and www files from brackets repo
grunt copy:linux copy:www copy:samples

# creates debian package installer/linux/brackets.deb
./installer/linux/build_installer.sh

User Stories

There are several user stories (feature work) to complete in brackets-shell before the Linux version reaches feature parity with Mac and Windows. These stories are listed below in priority order

User Story Status Affected Features Contact
Update CEF In Progress Everything Jason San Jose
Node Integration Not Started Live Preview HTML Highlighting, Extension Manager Install/Update/Remove Joel Brandt
Ubuntu Installer/Packaging In Progress Install experience Jason San Jose
File API - delete, rename Not Started Project tree and File menu delete and rename commands
Native Menus Not Started Menus (HTML menus are an interim, but completely functional substitute)
Show in OS Not Started Project tree command to show the selected file in the native OS file viewer
Automated Builds Not Started Jason San Jose

Development Log

  • 2013-07-30: Inline draft comments for sprint 28 build
  • 2013-06-22: Updated brackets-shell/linux branch with SVG app icon jasonsanjose
  • 2013-06-21: Linux branches land in master in brackets-shell and brackets. Includes: CEF parity with Mac and Win, stubbed methods for incomplete native shell stories (Node, File I/O, etc.), debian packaging. jasonsanjose
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