Dev Environment editor

[Masha Revnik]

I’ve recently become interested in creating content in SL, and I can tell right away that coding in notecards inworld is frustrating.  

Would anyone mind stepping me through their workflow to create and test content and then push it up to SL? At least in general terms.

I use Atom for other coding, and I see in the file-icons plugin for Atom that there is an SL  icon, so there MUST be someone else out there doing it this way!  What extensions do SL files use by the way?

Edited June 17, 2019 by Masha Revnik
Typo, adding tags, clarity

[Rolig Loon]

Coding in notecards?  That seems unnecessarily slow.  You should at least be using the LSL editor built into your viewer and coding in a "New Script" in an object somewhere.  Even that's a bit awkward, considering the minimal level of debugging messages that it offers.  You'll find a good starting list of external editors in the LSL wiki at http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL_Alternate_Editors .  Personally, I use Sublime Text 3, but every time this question comes up in the forum we get suggestions about the other editors that people prefer.

25 minutes ago, Masha Revnik said:

What extensions do SL files use by the way?

All LSL scripts have a .lsl file extension.  

[Wulfie Reanimator]

Personally I use Sublime Text because it has (in my opinion) a better syntax highlighter, but I have Atom as well!

My typical workflow is to create new script in-world, open it, and then click the little "Open in external editor" button on the built-in script editor. This should open the [uuid].lsl file in Atom, assuming you have configured your viewer correctly. Whenever you save the file in your editor, the script should automatically start recompiling in-world and restart as usual.

So, the two important things are:

1. Install a syntax highlighter plugin, which adds color to your code based on context.
   The one for Atom is called "brewery-lsl", by Builder's Brewery. They have one for Sublime Text as well, but there is an alternative one called "LSL" (sublime-text-lsl) by Makopo.
2. Set an external editor in your viewer's debug settings.
   1. Go to Advanced > Show Debug Settings
   2. Search/select "ExernalEditor"
   3. Enter the full path to the .exe of your editor within quotes.
      In my case: "D:\Sublime Text 3\sublime_text.exe"
      or "C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\atom\atom.exe"

[Masha Revnik]

Thank you very much, that was very helpful.