Alternative editor support

[aaronpowell]

It'd be great that if instead of using an online editor we could use the normal dev tools that we use for development.

Light weight cross platforms editors such as VS Code, Atom and Sublime Text are highly popular and have strong developer communities.

These editors allow people to setup a development environment just how they like it, installing extensions to help them build software.

It'd be great to see Fitbit using this extension model to ship tooling to help build applications for Fitbit.

By having a more fully fledged editor you can then open up the development approach to allow us to write automated tests against our logic, integrate with source control and collaboration platforms like GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab, etc. and then have CI/CD processes to deliver the applications to the store.

[TerryWStough]

Yes! Having even basics like Find and Replace would be incredible.

[g33kchris]

This would make a world of difference in developing software for the platform. I've only just started developing against the studio but it's a quite a painful feeback loop to see results and discover language 'quirks' (particularly as the SVG offering is a subset of current spec, what renders in the browser won't necessarily render on the FitBit). Which is such a shame because leveraging JS, CSS and SVG you've got a recipe for success.

I do wonder how hard it would be to create a crude yeoman generator for a local dev environment and build pipeline, and FitBit api stubs to write a testable app/clockface? It's nice the studio exists, but with that slow dev feedback loop it's really just a staging environment before publishing for approval.

[DavideFitbit]

Nice suggestion, thanks for sharing. We look forward to hearing what other community members think.

[mhelvens]

Yes, please! A simple command-line client for building and side-loading apps / watch-faces would be an excellent start. Surely that must be easier to write than a fully fledged online editor. And it could get the open source community started on further tools. Right now we seem to be hostage to the online editor which, admittedly, seems like a great entry-level tool to get many people started. But for professional developers it is quite the bottleneck.

Steps after that:

1. An emulator for apps / watch-faces with FitBit API stubs.

2. Allow side-loading apps / watch-faces without an internet connection (i.e., without going through your server).

3. Plugins for popular editors / IDEs (e.g., IntelliJ Idea).

[mhelvens]

Also, I can't edit the raw `package.json` file. Though I can download the one from Fitbit Studio, I can't put back my own version of the file, but have to enter the values through the provided controls. Not optimal.

[JonFitbit]

The command line interface allows you to use your preferred editor and source control.

https://dev.fitbit.com/blog/2018-08-23-cli-tools/