Since IBM’s initial investment in blockchain in 2015, one thing has become really clear: developers need innovative tools to support development, as the demand of enterprise blockchain solutions continues to grow. That’s why we’ve continued to invest in building with platforms developers already use, leverage the open source, and make tools and education accessible to everyone. The comprehensive blockchain developer tools for the IBM Blockchain Platform include simplified software development kits (SDKs) within The Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger Fabric 1.4, samples that include smart contracts and applications, tutorials to make every step of building applications easy, and a powerful end-to-end extension for Visual Studio Code.

We’re excited to have released v1.0.0 version of the IBM Blockchain Platform extension for Visual Studio Code. Since October, we’ve been building it in the open, regularly delivering new features based on feedback from our developer community. The extension has been downloaded over 23,000 times, and during the last six months we’ve released new features every two weeks. The v1.0.0 release will continue to deliver the most essential tools every blockchain developer needs, along with tutorials and samples to equip developers with blockchain fundamentals.

Start with our advanced VS Code extension right now

Introducing the v1.0.0 version of the IBM Blockchain Platform extension for Visual Studio Code

Developers who are new to the IBM Blockchain Platform will find it simple to get started with developing blockchain applications. The extension includes a set of integrated tutorials that guide a developer through developing their first smart contract and deploying that smart contract to a cloud hosted network, as well as samples that demonstrate real world use cases and best practices.

The extension also provides developers with an extensive set of capabilities that assist them throughout the process of developing their blockchain solutions.

Developers can quickly create new smart contract projects, with best practices around linting and unit testing baked in from the start. Standing up a local Fabric peer for development purposes is as simple as clicking a button, and developers can rapidly package and deploy their smart contracts to this peer. Developers can interactively test their deployed smart contracts by submitting transactions, and they can generate a set of functional tests that can be automated into their CI/CD pipelines. When things go wrong, developers can debug their smart contracts as they would any other application — stepping through the code line by line as transactions are executed. When development moves from local to cloud, developers can add a gateway connections to any peer, running anywhere with the IBM Blockchain Platform.

Developers can achieve all of that, and more, without ever leaving their integrated development environment (IDE).

The extension is built around Hyperledger Fabric 1.4, and any smart contracts and applications that developers build with the extension can be deployed to any Hyperledger Fabric 1.4 network using the standard SDKs and command-line interfaces (CLIs).

We’re continuing to develop the extension, and we aim to publish a new version of the extension every couple of weeks. Developers can view the changelog in the marketplace for information on the latest enhancements — and they’ll also get access to our blockchain themed comics!

Grow with us and get in touch

With this investment in the development lifecycle, and the flexibility and control our new version of the IBM Blockchain Platform for production networks, developers can be assured that they have everything they need to be able to build, grow, scale, and receive support with the IBM Blockchain Platform. Developers can start by downloading the extension from the Visual Studio Marketplace for free, and begin development with our beginner tutorials. We invite developers to ask question through Stack Overflow and contribute through GitHub.

Simplicity, speed and value for blockchain developers