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The Problem
Developer productivity relies on having great tools and that includes an industry-grade IDE. In addition to a great IDE, you also probably rely on a multitude of other tools to get your job done.
Currently, Stellar/Soroban development requires you to switch between quite a few tools: the Stellar Laboratory, the Soroban-CLI, RunKit, Postman, curl, and your own scripts and code snippets, among others, to leverage core features of the platform.
While there are online solutions (specialized IDEs) helping users to streamline workflow, and they are great for your first steps, once you deep-dive for a while you outgrow them very quickly or find their features limiting. Also, having to “learn” how they work, only puts more cognitive load when you are already on a steep learning curve for Stellar/Soroban.
The Solution
Why re-invent the wheel? Let’s Stellar/Soroban-ize a tool already used by millions: Visual Studio Code.
The roadmap ahead
Our extension will provide easy access from within Visual Studio Code to built-in Soroban platform services and features, such as:
... among others.
The roadmap even further ahead
Visual Studio Code also runs in a web browser: www.vscode.dev, and while not all extensions can be added and used in that environment (there are certain restrictions), it certainly does potentially allow to have a fully-featured, completely web-based Visual Studio Code user experience (no local installs and cloud based development flow).
The current problem (which can be solved by using remote development and/or Codespaces, but both of these solutions are cost-prohibitive), is related to usage of the Rust toolchain currently required for Soroban development. Once this general problem is solved, our solution could be deployed to Visual Studio Code on the web, making it the #1 developer choice for building projects, which unfortunately can result in downgrading of other Stellar/Soroban-specialized online IDEs currently out there (or make them more of a user choice or preference).
A note on global audience
There are no distribution restrictions on Visual Studio Code extensions, so our potential market is every developer wanting a better experience when building Stellar/Soroban projects. However, we do want to point out that we plan to launch v.1 with i10n support, and we will support both English (default) and Spanish.
For the past two weeks, we have worked mainly in three areas:
- UI + Feature design: Visual Studio Code workbench integrations (ActivityBar, TreeView, Views, Menus, and future WebViews for Custom viewers).
- Localization (l10n) support for English as Spanish UI: as this impacts the entire implementation (i10n architecture), we needed to add support to this as our first priority.
- Soroban CLI integration/interoperability with Visual Studio Code: to avoid multiple toolset integrations, we've based our feature v1.0 implementations on top of the soroban cli tools, as they are a pre-requisite (must be installed) to develop any Soroban project.
How can a reviewer check you completed your first deliverable?
We have created a publicly accessible document that provides insight into our project's progress, both related to our proof of intent but also to our general roadmap.
The document can be found in Google Drive: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wMX2d-oMDvKTDKFjBbGmvkdyj8XLJJZz1EepG5-gaKA/edit?usp=sharing
We are still making a few videos related to the extension features, but as these are edits to the document, we did not want to miss the proof of intent submission deadline over these. We thank your for your understanding!
Matias Wald (Matias Wald | Ω#5025)
Software Engineer / Microsoft certified ID# 2955487
+20Yrs. Software Engineer and Tech Lead. I've worked in several fields and industries, including electronic voting solutions and the pharmaceutical industry. For the past 2Yrs. deep-dived into blockchain and web3.
The USD valuation of the budget request in XLM will be calculated using the CF Stellar Lumens-Dollar Settlement Price on December 5, 2022 as administered, maintained, and reported by the cryptocurrency index provider CF Benchmarks Ltd. (using the ticker “XLMUSD_RR”) (available at https://www.cfbenchmarks.com/indices/XLMUSD_RR). Learn more in the SCF Handbook.
*The USD valuation of the award in XLM is calculated using the CF Stellar Lumens-Dollar Settlement Price on July 5th as administered, maintained, and reported by the cryptocurrency index provider CF Benchmarks Ltd. (using the ticker “XLMUSD_RR”) (available at https://www.cfbenchmarks.com/indices/XLMUSD_RR)
**The USD valuation of the award in XLM is calculated using the CF Stellar Lumens-Dollar Settlement Price on December 16, 2021 as administered, maintained, and reported by the cryptocurrency index provider CF Benchmarks Ltd. (using the ticker “XLMUSD_RR”) (available at https://www.cfbenchmarks.com/indices/XLMUSD_RR)
*The USD valuation of the award in XLM is calculated using the CF Stellar Lumens-Dollar Settlement Price on September 27, 2021 as administered, maintained, and reported by the cryptocurrency index provider CF Benchmarks Ltd. (using the ticker “XLMUSD_RR”) (available at https://www.cfbenchmarks.com/indices/XLMUSD_RR)
* The USD valuation of the award in XLM is calculated using the CF Stellar Lumens-Dollar Settlement Price on the date of transfer as administered, maintained, and reported by the cryptocurrency index provider CF Benchmarks Ltd. (using the ticker “XLMUSD_RR”) (available at https://www.cfbenchmarks.com/indices/XLMUSD_RR)
*This budget request has not been fully awarded to the project. The USD valuation of the budget request in XLM will be calculated using the CF Stellar Lumens-Dollar Settlement Price on day of payment as administered, maintained, and reported by the cryptocurrency index provider CF Benchmarks Ltd. (using the ticker “XLMUSD_RR”) (available at https://www.cfbenchmarks.com/indices/XLMUSD_RR). Learn more in the SCF Handbook.
*This budget request has been awarded to the project in XLM. The USD valuation of the budget request in XLM will be calculated using the CF Stellar Lumens-Dollar Settlement Price on day of payment as administered, maintained, and reported by the cryptocurrency index provider CF Benchmarks Ltd. (using the ticker “XLMUSD_RR”) (available at https://www.cfbenchmarks.com/indices/XLMUSD_RR). Learn more in the SCF Handbook.
*This budget request has not been fully awarded to the project. The USD valuation of the budget request in XLM will be calculated using the CF Stellar Lumens-Dollar Settlement Price on day of payment as administered, maintained, and reported by the cryptocurrency index provider CF Benchmarks Ltd. (using the ticker “XLMUSD_RR”) (available at https://www.cfbenchmarks.com/indices/XLMUSD_RR). Learn more in the SCF Handbook.
*This budget request has not been fully awarded to the project. The USD valuation of the budget request in XLM will be calculated using the CF Stellar Lumens-Dollar Settlement Price on day of payment as administered, maintained, and reported by the cryptocurrency index provider CF Benchmarks Ltd. (using the ticker “XLMUSD_RR”) (available at https://www.cfbenchmarks.com/indices/XLMUSD_RR). Learn more in the SCF Handbook.
*This budget request has not been fully awarded to the project. The USD valuation of the budget request in XLM will be calculated using the CF Stellar Lumens-Dollar Settlement Price on day of payment as administered, maintained, and reported by the cryptocurrency index provider CF Benchmarks Ltd. (using the ticker “XLMUSD_RR”) (available at https://www.cfbenchmarks.com/indices/XLMUSD_RR). Learn more in the SCF Handbook.