Cloud Code, Google Cloud plugins for IntelliJ & VS Code now available

Developing for the cloud can be an entirely different experience than developing a local app, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be this way. During the second day of Cloud Next ’19, Google has launched Cloud Code, a plugin for IntelliJ IDEs and Visual Studio Code that will help developers create cloud applications.

At its core, Cloud Code was built to let you develop and debug cloud applications in the same, familiar way that developers can with local applications. To Google, this meant equipping the IDEs that developers already use, like Visual Studio Code and IntelliJ, with new cloud development tools.

With Cloud Code installed, it’s easy to start a new Kubernetes cluster and debug both your application and the environment itself. All your logs are fed directly into your IDE, just as if you were working on a local application.

Support for deployment profiles lets you define different deployment targets, like local development, shared development, test, or production, so you can easily test and debug on your workstation or in the cloud.

Another key area of cloud development that Google has tackled is the difficulty for beginners to get correctly set up with Kubernetes. With Cloud Code, you gain access to a variety of pre-configured sample projects to use as a foundation to build on.

While some aspects of the plugins favor Google Cloud services, such as automatic library and dependency management, Cloud Code is specifically designed to work with Kubernetes, regardless of your provider. Google has even provided tools for easily creating new Kubernetes clusters on services from competitors like AWS and Azure. This has been a recurring theme at this year’s Cloud Next, as other services like Cloud Run have also been designed to be easily moved to another provider.

Anyone who wishes to get started with developing with Kubernetes can download one of the Cloud Code plugins today from Google Cloud or your IDE’s extensions marketplace.