A while ago, I ran across the brackets development environment. It looked really awesome, particularly the part about dynamically updating the page as you edit it. When I first heard about it, the Linux version was not quite out yet. Now, they have a package and everything for easy installation. So, here’s a first post about what I found.
Installing and getting it running
First things first, I downloaded the “.deb” package from the Brackets Download Page. It must have detected that I was running Ubuntu and automatically offered me the deb package.
When I started it, I got this error:
skp@pecan:~$ brackets /usr/lib/brackets/Brackets: error while loading shared libraries: libudev.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
The solution was to symbolically link the udev library:
skp@pecan:~$ ls /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libudev.so.1 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libudev.so.1 skp@pecan:~$ cd /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ skp@pecan:/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu$ sudo ln -s libudev.so.1 libudev.so.0
Then, I tried again. Everything worked fine!
Upgrading
One of the disadvantages to using software that is not in the Software Center repositories is that it doesn’t automatically check for updates. Well, this isn’t so bad because it checks for updates by itself.
When Sprint 30 was available, it prompted me about upgrading:
Clicking the “Get it now!” button took me to the Brackets website where I downloaded the latest version. When I clicked on the downloaded deb file, the Software Center offered to Upgrade for me:
Live Preview
The big feature that caught my eye was the live preview, so of course, I wanted to see it work. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t work for me.
I could set the URL for my project with the File > Project Settings… menu. It opens this dialog.
Then, the live preview has an icon on the right, or you can use the File > Live Preview menu.
On the console, it spits out:
Created new window in existing browser session.
The IDE displays this dialog:
When I clicked the Relaunch Chome button, nothing happens. On the console, it prints:
Created new window in existing browser session.
I haven’t figured this one out yet.
Linux: Cannot relaunch Chrome with remote debugging enabled.
Extensions
I decided to take a peak at what extensions were available. You can launch the extensions dialog with the icon on the right or with the File > Extension manager… menu.
The Extensions dialog has an “Available” tab where I found a couple of extensions that looked helpful. I decided to start with the Angular JS extension and the Git extension.
When I installed the git extension, it asked where git was installed. I had installed git with apt-get and it was on the path, so I just checked the “Git can be installed from anywhere” option.
The git extension made me restart Brackets:
I haven’t played with it much, but the git extension seemed to add a good interface for working with the git repository. I couldn’t tell that the Angular extension did anything.