Editing/IDEs

Visual Studio Code is recommended, since it provides decent support for all the languages Anki uses. To set up the recommended workspace settings for VS Code, please see below.

For editing Python, PyCharm/IntelliJ’s type checking/completion is a bit nicer than VS Code, but VS Code has improved considerably in a short span of time.

There are a few steps you’ll want to take before you start using an IDE.

Initial Setup

Python Environment

For code completion of external Python modules, you can use the venv that is generated as part of the build process. After building Anki, the venv will be in out/pyenv. In VS Code, use ctrl/cmd+shift+p, then ‘python: select interpreter’.

Rust

You’ll need Rust to be installed, which is required as part of the build process.

Build First

Code completion partly depends on files that are generated as part of the regular build process, so for things to work correctly, use ‘./run’ or ‘tools/build’ prior to using code completion.

Visual Studio Code

Setting up Recommended Workspace Settings

To start off with some default workspace settings that are optimized for Anki development, please head to the project root and then run:

mkdir .vscode && cd .vscode
ln -sf ../.vscode.dist/* .

Installing Recommended Extensions

Once the workspace settings are set up, open the root of the repo in VS Code to see and install a number of recommended extensions.

PyCharm/IntelliJ

Setting up Python environment

To make PyCharm recognize anki and aqt imports, you need to add source paths to Settings > Project Structure. You can copy the provided .idea.dist directory to set up the paths automatically:

mkdir .idea && cd .idea
ln -sf ../.idea.dist/* .

You also need to add a new Python interpreter under Settings > Python > Interpreter pointing to the Python executable under out/pyenv (available after building Anki).