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Set Up Your Environment

In this section you'll learn how to set up your environment for custom component development.

Operating system considerations​

You can develop custom components on any operating system that supports NodeJS (Windows, Linux, MacOS, etc). If you use Windows, you may find it helpful to work in a Windows Subsystem for Linux WSL environment.

Install NodeJS​

Custom components are written in NodeJS (with TypeScript layered on top). While many version of NodeJS can be used to build custom components, we recommend using the latest LTS version available on NodeJS.org.

Once you install NodeJS, ensure that you can run both node --version and npm --version.

Install an IDE​

If you have a favorite code editor, use that. We've found that VS Code works great for custom component development, but some of our developers prefer Sublime or neovim.

It's not necessary, but if you use VS Code we've found the following extensions helpful:

VS Code has built-in TypeScript IntelliSense (auto-complete), but if you want to use the latest-and-greatest, you can also install the TypeScript Nightly build extension.

Install the Prismatic CLI tool​

The Prismatic CLI tool, prism is used for initializing and publishing custom components. You can install it after installing NodeJS and npm with this command:

Install prism
npm install --global @prismatic-io/prism

Once you've installed prism, log in by typing prism login. You'll be prompted to enter your Prismatic credentials, and then to authorize prism to access your Prismatic account. Click Accept.

Once you've logged in, run prism me to verify that you are logged in.

$ prism me
Name: John Doe
Email: john.doe@example.com
Organization: Example Corp - US Region
Endpoint URL: https://app.prismatic.io