Building an Integrated Development Environment

Are you wondering how to build an integrated development environment?

The global market for integrated development environments is expected to grow at a CAGR of 22% during the forecast period of 2023 – 2028. The cloud IDE market is expected to reach 1.72 billion US dollars by 2029.

There are many IDEs available with different characteristics. Some IDEs support multiple languages, and others are language-specific. There are also cloud-based IDEs. Some support mobile development, some are free, and others are proprietary.

However, you may want to build your own IDE with customized features. You may also want to invest in the expanding IDE market via feature-rich IDE software. Let’s see in detail how you can do that.

You need to go through the following steps to build an integrated development environment.

Decide your IDE Development Project Scope

Your first step is to perform comprehensive market research. There are many proprietary and open-source IDEs available in the market. Open-source IDE applications, like Eclipse, are continuously being improved by experienced software developers.

You need to understand the limitations of the available IDE solutions. What are the pain points of users, and what more do they want in terms of features and developer productivity? Your IDE should offer features that make the platform stand out from the rest.

An integrated development environment offers a centralized platform to perform various tasks in the development process under one user interface. An IDE helps to write, debug, compile, and publish software code.

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Some of the key features of an IDE include the following:

A source code editor with IntelliSense options like syntax highlighting, intelligent code completion, error highlighting, etc.
Compiler to convert high-level programming language code to machine code.
Debugger to test code lines and validate code functionality.
A code refactoring feature to clean up code and make it more readable.
Build automation tools to automate local build tasks on local development environments.
Plugins to extend IDE capabilities like integrating third-party tools, code libraries, multiple programming languages, etc.

You can add more features to your requirements specification document that entails the functional and non-functional requirements of your IDE.

Form a Software Development Team

You require a competent development team to undertake the IDE development project successfully. You need to hire the following roles:

A UI/UX designer helps create an interactive and intuitive user interface;
A frontend developer develops the frontend of the application according to the design prototypes by designers;
A backend developer develops the core features of the application, including third-party integrations, deployment, etc.;
A software tester conducts quality assurance testing;
A business analyst works closely with the project manager and conducts market research, and proposes solutions to build great software applications;
A project manager manages the entire development team, development life cycle, timelines, cost estimates, etc.

We have discussed in detail how to build a successful dev team in our article here.

Select a Software Development Methodology

You also need to select a software development methodology to guide your project manager and developers.

Agile software development methodologies like scrum help the development team to efficiently build app features, collaborate closely with each other and the end users, and incorporate variable market requirements into the development iterations easily.

You can follow our guide and build a scrum team. Your scrum team members would conduct daily and weekly meetings to stay on track, discuss roadblocks, and propose solutions to problems.

Decide the Software Development Infrastructure

The next step is the provision of development infrastructure. Software development infrastructure includes hosting servers, database storage, networking resources, software development tools, testing tools, etc.

Cloud-based software development resources provide multiple benefits like easy access to cutting-edge storage and computation resources, scalability and flexibility, cost-effectiveness, etc.

Users do not have to spend on the installation and maintenance of resources on-premises. Cloud service providers host and manage cloud computing resources. Some popular cloud providers include Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, etc.

Design and Develop an IDE Solution

Now that your development team has all the required tools, they could start to design your IDE application.

Integrated Development Environment Design

Your designers would design the application layout and UI components. Designers create low-fidelity wireframes that contain the layout of each application screen and high-fidelity prototypes that explain the visual themes, color palette, interaction between UI components, etc.

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Your designers can use tools like Sketch, Figma, etc., to create application design prototypes.

IDE Development

Your backend developers would develop the core features of your IDE application. Your developers can adopt multiple approaches to IDE development. For example, they can create each IDE feature as a plugin.

Your developers can also start from an existing project instead of building everything from scratch. For example, Google used Eclipse, an open-source IDE, to develop the earlier versions of Android Studio. IntelliJ by JetBrains is another open-source IDE you can take as a starting point.

Your IDE developers should be proficient in programming languages like Java, C++, Python, etc., to efficiently use open-source software projects and extend them with additional capabilities.

Your software developers can also use multiple open-source code bases for features like text editors, debuggers, compilers, etc., and customize it according to your functional requirements.

For example, there are WxWidget, QT, etc., with extensive UI widget libraries that your developers can utilize in your IDE.

Similarly, they can use the Git plugin for source code management features, Ant for code build, the GDB plugin by Kate, an open-source project, or x64dbg plugins for a debugger, etc.

Your software developers should also be proficient in API development technologies, like REST architecture, GraphQL query language, and tools like Postman, Swagger, etc., to build, test, and publish IDE API features.

Test your Integrated Development Environment Platform

After IDE application features development, your development team would conduct comprehensive testing of your IDE software. They would create a testing environment to test the functional and non-functional requirements of your application.

Some test procedures include alpha testing, beta testing, security testing, performance testing, usability testing, etc.

Testing tools like HPE Unified Functional Testing, IBM Rational Functional Tester, JMeter, etc., will help your QA engineers run automated test routines.

Publish and Manage the IDE Platform

Once your development team is sure that your IDE performs as required, they could start the deployment cycle.

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Developers follow DevOps practices like continuous testing, continuous integration, metric monitoring, etc., to efficiently deliver application features through extensive testing, automation of deployment tasks, etc., and fulfill the end-user requirements.

Your development team would monitor the performance of IDE among the developers’ community. You need to collect users’ feedback and incorporate suggestions into the next development iterations.

You also need a support team to keep your IDE updated with the latest advancements in the software development industry, like development technologies, hardware upgrades, etc.

Moreover, developers should also provide technical support in the case of any bugs or faults in the system.

IDE development is a complicated project and takes time and effort even by experienced developers. You cannot complete such a market-competitive project with freelancers. You require exceptional software engineers.

DevTeam.Space can help you hire competent developers from our field-expert software developers’ community. You can either outsource your complete development project to us or hire a few developers per your project team’s requirements.

Why not send us your initial project specifications via this quick form? One of our account managers will get back to you to discuss further how we can help you via our expert software developers and project managers.

1. What makes a good integrated development environment?

An IDE is part of a broader software development environment. A well-integrated development environment (IDE) makes the tasks of application development easier for developers. It provides features like an easy-to-use text editor, windows for class browser, object browser, etc., integrations for code libraries, plugins for external tools, an efficient compiler or an interpreter, debugging tools, etc.

2. What are the three components of an integrated development environment IDE?

A code editor, a compiler, and a debugger are the three main components of an integrated development environment IDE.

3. What are examples of integrated development environments?

Xcode, Eclipse, NetBeans, Android Studio, etc., are examples of IDE.