That’s a great question. Here’s some more information about what you can expect from the Particle Workbench developer preview.
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Manual installation. During the developer preview, Particle Workbench will have to be installed manually on top of Visual Studio Code. When Particle Workbench is released in v1.0, it will be available via the Microsoft VSC extensions marketplace, and will also be made available with a prepackaged Particle Workbench installers for MacOS, Windows, and Linux.
Until then, all updates and releases will have to be downloaded and manually installed via the instructions provided here in the forums.
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Evolving documentation. During the developer preview, most of the documentation, tutorials, and Q&A will be hosted here in the community forums. Upon v1.0 release, the production docs for Particle Workbench will be made available at http://docs.particle.io
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Some rough edges. Upon release, Particle Workbench is intended to support the following development flows for MacOS, Windows, and Linux:
- Local compilation and flashing
- Cloud based compilation and flashing
- Code completion and Intellisense for Particle’s Device OS
- Basic support for Particle Device OS library management APIs
- Support for light (Matter) and dark (Dark Matter) visual themes
There will also be some built-in Visual Studio Code features that should enhance Particle Workbench as well:
- Git and other source management integrations
- Step-through debugging
While we have tested each of these happy paths prior to distributing the developer preview, there may be some instances where things don’t work as expected. That’s great – it gives us an opportunity to fix the edge cases and bugs that may appear when the tool is installed and use across a meaningfully diverse set of hardware and environments.
Please read the post, Information: How to report bugs and provide feedback for detailed instructions on how to provide feedback on Particle Workbench during developer preview.
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Rapid improvements. During developer preview, we hope to rapidly make progress on the development of features and the resolution of bugs for Particle Workbench. To that end, check back in the forums for new versions of the Workbench extension to make sure you’re always working with the latest and greatest.
For now, these updates will have to be installed manually using the instructions in Tutorial: Installing the Particle Workbench developer preview. Upon official release, all updates will be handled automatically using the built-in extension manager.
Need help finding something during the developer preview? Give the forums a quick search, and feel free to post a new topic if you can’t find something. We’re here to help! 