After launching Project IDX in public preview six months ago, Google announces major updates to its platform, including iOS and Android emulators, additional models for the most popular frameworks and a wider range of compatible tools .
The biggest new feature is an in-browser iOS simulator and Android emulator, allowing developers to preview their apps in a mobile view without leaving their workspace. (A simulator imitates software without imitating hardware. An emulator goes further by emulating software and hardware configurations).
“I use IDX with Project Malloy. I often have several different data projects going on simultaneously,” a Google software engineer said of Project IDX. “IDX allows me to quickly create an instance to solve a problem, and setting it up is trivial.”
One place to make it easy to develop, test, and debug applications
Whether developers are building a Flutter app or a web app, Project IDX loads the appropriate preview environment for the app, which can be mobile Safari, Chrome, Android, or iOS. Consolidating a cross-platform process into one easy-to-navigate place makes it easier to develop, test and debug applications, Google said.
The iOS Simulator has an experimental feature that lets developers check the look and behavior of their app as they work, Google says.
Besides the iOS simulator and Android emulator, one of the most requested features from developers is support for more project templates, Google said.
The IDX project uses Nix to configure models and previews
Google has therefore added new models for Astro, Go, Python/Flask, Qwik, Lit, Preact, Solifd.js and Node.js. Developers can still import their repositories from GitHub and their local files, or choose their configuration with a custom Nix environment, which has been improved in this latest round of updates.
The IDX project uses Nix, a cross-platform package manager, to configure templates and previews. Now, developers can customize IDX startup templates by taking advantage of Nix extensibility, using Nix file editing to reduce errors and write code more efficiently, quickly recovering from broken configurations and avoiding crashes. unnecessary rebuild attempts thanks to improvements to the environment customization workflow.
Other improvements to IDX include the ability to automatically detect network ports and adjust firewall settings without additional configuration, enable Docker in the dev.nix file to easily work with containers and images Docker, and run command-line tools, scripts, and utilities in the developer’s workspace without having to install them locally.
Source: “ZDNet.com”