As front-end communities grow more prosperous, front-end environments become more complex. Generally speaking, software tools such as Git, Node.js, Google Chrome and Visiual Studio Code need to be installed before developing front-end applications, and a lot of tedious environment configuration is required. While there are similar tools available in the community (chocolatey, Homebrew, etc.) that address the difficulty of setting up, configuring, and managing environments, these tools often require a lot of command-line operations, which can be costly for beginners to learn.

Based on this background, we launch AppToolkit, a desktop client based on Electron. AppToolkit provides the ability to visually configure the environment, shielding the complexity of environment configuration and the cost of command line learning, helping developers build a front-end development environment easily and quickly.

🎉 After nearly 3 months of development iterations, AppToolkit is officially released to the public. Welcome to experience it.

  • MAC version download address

The Windows version is in beta and is expected to be available in mid-November

Here’s a look at what The AppToolkit has and how you can use it to solve these problems.

Faster and easier to configure front-end environments

AppToolkit provides one-click quick installation and development of necessary software tools, including Git, Node.js, Google Chrome, VS Code, AppWorks development tool set based on VS Code plug-in, and package management tool TNPM/CNPM. Help developers quickly build a basic front-end development environment.

Now you can open the Visual Studio Code editor with AppWorks and start your front-end development journey.

Select development tools, bring higher development efficiency

We select common and easy to use front-end development tools, including but not limited to browser, IDE, network agent tools, interface debugging tools, DevTools, etc. AppToolkit can quickly install tools in one click, greatly reducing the time to find and install tools.

Visual Node management

If some NPM modules do not work because the local node.js version is too late, or if you want to experience the new features of a new version of Node.js, you may need to uninstall the original node.js, download the new version, and install it. With AppToolkit, you can install or switch between other Node.js versions with one click, making the whole process easy and simple.

If the original global dependency is unavailable after node.js is switched to another version, AppToolkit can configure a unified global dependency installation path with one click to avoid repeated global dependency installation.

In addition, AppToolkit provides global NPM image source management to help developers quickly switch image sources. Supports visual management of global NPM dependencies to quickly locate, install, upgrade, and uninstall dependencies.

Faster and more secure Git management

Easy global Git configuration

In the past, modifying Git configurations required a lot of command line work, which was a high hurdle for beginners to learn. AppToolkit provides a visual way to help developers manage their global Git configuration more easily and quickly.

Best practices for managing multiple Git accounts

As a professional front-end development, I believe everyone will have more Git account development scenarios. Such as:

  • To develop open source projects, use a GitHub account;
  • To develop internal projects of the company, accounts such as GitLab and Gitee shall be used;
  • .

Switching Git accounts is tedious, and it is easy to mix Git accounts, which gives many developers a headache. To this end, we have provided very convenient best practices, which have been well received by the front end team of Alitao.

Let’s say you’re developing your project in GitHub and Gitee. In the workspace directory, you have two directories — gitub-projects and Gitee-projects — to house your Git project. You can quickly add Git configurations in AppToolkit and automatically generate an SSH key for each Git configuration. After adding the SSH public key to the corresponding code hosting platform, git clone the corresponding project to the corresponding directory. There is no need to pay attention to Git account information in future operations related to Git, and the problem of Git account mixing will not occur.

The last

AppToolkit will continue to pay attention to user experience and be a front-end environment management tool favored by developers. If you have any questions or problems during the process of use, please join the user nail group or raise issues, we will answer your questions in the first time:

  • AppToolkit
  • AppWorks website
  • ICE’s official website


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