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Set up your development environment

This guide shows you how to set up your software development environment so that you can programmatically extend the Intrinsic platform.

Introduction​

Intrinsic provides a development environment that relies on Visual Studio Code and development containers.

Containers​

A container is a unit of software that packages code, such as an application or service, along with its dependencies. Containers virtualize the operating system and run quickly and reliably across computing environments, such as a private data center, a public cloud, or even a developer's laptop. Containers can be used in many ways, such as running an application; providing a standard computing environment for continuous integration and testing; or providing tools, libraries, or runtimes needed for software development. This last case is called a development container (or "dev container", for short).

VS Code Development Container Extension​

Visual Studio Code provides support for dev containers with its Dev Containers extension. This extension lets you use a Docker container as a full-featured development environment. Visual Studio Code runs on the developer's host platform and the extension lets you access the files and tools inside a container, taking advantage of Visual Studio Code's full feature set.

The Intrinsic Development Container​

Intrinsic provides a development container that includes the Intrinsic SDK. Using the Intrinsic development container, you can create extensions to the Intrinsic platform, such as adding new skills and services that can then be incorporated into processes defined using Flowstate's Process Editor.

Development environment options​

Intrinsic provides two options for setting up your development environment, either installing locally on your computer or running in the cloud on GitHub Codespaces.

  • Local installation

    With the local installation option, you will set up an Intrinsic development environment on your computer.

    note

    This option does not utilize external compute resource and does not incur any further expenses.

  • GitHub Codespaces

    The second option allows you to run the Intrinsic development environment in the cloud using GitHub Codespaces.

    Be Aware

    This option is paid and may result in extra charges to you or your organization from GitHub.

Select one of the previous options and follow the instructions on the linked page to complete the setup of your development environment.

Installing inctl and inbuild​

For installing inctl and inbuild from GitHub Releases, follow the Inctl and Inbuild installation process

Troubleshoot problems​

To troubleshoot common problems with the dev container, review the Dev Containers FAQ.

Additionally, if you are having issues with your local development environment, you can use the inctl doctor command to help diagnose common issues or generate a report that can help support diagnose your issue more quickly.