Using external IDE for scripting

Coding Python Support
1

Hi,

I just started with Blender this month, and the internal IDE is pretty awful. So I’ve searched online for a solution for this, but I could not find one. I now made a script which reloads a file when it is changed. This way I can use any IDE I’d like. I now want to make an add-on out of it, but I need some advice on what would be an expected location.

Basically, the add-on will “load” an external file once, I just do not know where this load function should be put. I was thinking of using the file menu. But since I am not so experienced yet with the Blender UI, I do not know if this would be a proper place. Please share your knowledge with me :wink:

2

There is a way of using Eclipse as IDE,
search the archives here for a thread about it.

https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Tools/Debugging/Python_Eclipse

3

I’m using a script to just copy all the addon files into Blender addon directory and then press F8 in Blender to reload all scripts. Maybe not the most efficient or intelligent workflow but takes like 5 seconds so I’m ok with it. Plus the script also packs the addon into a .zip so I can just copy the .zip and distribute that for other people.

(Windows Powershell)

Remove-Item addon.zip
Copy-Item -Recurse source myaddon
7z a addon.zip myaddon
Remove-Item -Recurse myaddon
Remove-Item -Recurse “C:\Users
ame\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.79\scripts\addons\myaddon*”
Copy-Item -Recurse source* “C:\Users
ame\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.79\scripts\addons\myaddon”

Also you need something like this for init.py to reload all the libraries:


if "bpy" in locals():
  import importlib
  importlib.reload(voxelize)
else:
  from . import voxelize