Visual Studio Code Development

Visual Studio Code is a great and simple IDE that can be used to build & develop with for Matter.

Matter supports the docker / remote container workflow in Visual Studio Code, and has a container environment setup automatically. You can read more about this workflow here.

Tested on:

  • Windows 11 Pro + WSL 2 + Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
  • Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

Setup Steps

Follow these steps to set up Visual Studio Code for Matter development.

Linux

For Espressif esp32 devices:

  1. Connect your device to the system before running the container.

  2. Add "--device=/dev/ttyUSB0", inside runArgs in devcontainer.json. Confirm the port of the device and change the parameter accordingly.

  3. On opening connectedhomeip in Visual Studio code, At the bottom right of your window you should have a new box prompting you to re-open the window as a container. Hit yes.

  4. The container will be built.

  5. Install esp-idf : cd /opt/espressif/esp-idf && ./install.sh

  6. Source esp-idf : source /opt/espressif/esp-idf/export.sh

  7. Activate matter : cd /workspaces/connectedhomeip && source scripts/bootstrap.sh && source scripts/activate.sh

  8. Confirm that the device is accessible : ls -l /dev/ttyUSB*

  9. Go to lighting_example : cd examples/lighting-app/esp32

  10. Set-target: idf.py set-target esp32c3

  11. Build the project: idf.py build

  12. Flash: idf.py -p /dev/ttyUSB0 flash

  13. Monitor: idf.py -p /dev/ttyUSB0 monitor

Windows

  1. Connect to WSL Distro from VS Code.

  2. Git clone inside WSL from Matter repository here: https://github.com/project-chip/connectedhomeip

  3. Follow these steps on Windows and these steps in WSL to have serial port access inside WSL.

  4. Confirm that the device is accessible inside WSL : ls -l /dev/ttyUSB*.

  5. Open connectedhomeip within WSL on Visual Studio Code.

  6. Perform step 2 onwards from Linux guide.