watson | practices application template for elementary OS

The install task first checks whether you have the elementary OS development libraries installed and asks you to install them if it can’t find them. The elementary OS development libraries – also known as the elementary OS Software Development Kit (SDK) – are a metapackage of elementary OS libraries required when creating apps for elementary OS. You can see which libraries are included in the SDK based on the architecture of your development machine by reviewing the following metapackage definitions: AMD64, ARM64, ARMHF. Next, Watson will check if you have VSCodium installed. If you do, it will check whether or not you have useful set of VSCodium extensions for elementary OS development installed and ask you to install them if you don’t. You do not need to use VSCodium to create elementary OS apps. You can, for instance, use elementary OS Code, which comes preinstalled, or a different third-party editor like Builder. However, if you do have VSCodium installed, there are a number of extensions that will make creating your elementary OS app easier (Vala, Meson, CodeLLDB, XML, YAML). If Watson cannot find these extensions installed, it will ask you if you’d like to install them now. With these extensions installed, once you’ve initialised your project, you can simple open it in VSCodium and hit F5 to run/debug it and Ctrl + Shift + B → Build all targets to rebuild it after making changes. You will also get code intelligence, etc., for all your source files. Finally, your project will also inform VSCodium of the set of recommended extensions for your project so even if you choose not to install them now, you can easily find and install them later yourself.
Once the install task is done, Watson will delete itself, leaving only your project behind. It will also commit and push the changes to your git repository. At this point, your project is ready and you can customise the template further to create your own unique and wonderful app, knowing you have a base that adheres to elementary OS guidelines.