Issue the following command to launch the Leafpad editor.Create a directory called “share” in your home directory as follows:.We will create a Windows file share on the RasPi so we can use our Node.js IDE from our Windows machine directly. This is one of the steps we completed as part of my Beginner’s Guide to Installing Node.js on a Raspberry Pi so please reference that article if you want a comprehensive guide on the entire RasPi installation. We’ll see the beauty and versatility of cross-platform JavaScript in action! Let’s get started. When we are done writing the code, we can then run it natively on either the Windows machine or the RasPi. We will create a network file share on the RasPi and map the drive on the Windows machine so we can harness the computing power of our Windows machine to write the code. I’m approaching this from the Windows platform, but I believe these steps can be adapted for OS X and Linux platforms as well.

Don’t worry if you have another preferred IDE such as Sublime Text or Atom as these steps will be generally applicable. In this tutorial, we’re going to use Visual Studio Code for doing Node.js development. I offer here a creative alternative we will use to expedite the software development lifecycle and run the Node.js code natively on the Pi.

It turns out that the RasPi 2 and RasPi 3-in spite of the significant CPU/memory boost they offer over their predecessors-will run most IDEs a bit sluggishly and will be frustrating for any serious Node.js work. I propose that we use some more robust tools in the form of an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) to help us along in our coding journey. So how are we going to write Node.js code? There’s nothing that would stop us from simply jumping onto our RasPi and using the Leafpad text editor or even the nano console-based editor to write our code. We’re back with our LTM (Learning through Making) series of Node.js tutorials and we’re gearing up and getting ready to write some code! We’ve learned how to build a Raspberry Pi from the ground up including Node.js, we’ve created a web server in Node without code, and we’ve even managed to get this web server on the Internet as a cool trick.

Sublime text raspberry pi