r/Sketchup • u/Bitter-Tax1483 • 1d ago

Can I develop a SketchUp Ruby extension on Linux without having SketchUp installed?

Hi, I’m new to SketchUp extension development. I use Linux as my main PC, but I don’t have SketchUp installed.

I want to build a SketchUp extension using Ruby and VS Code. I have a friend who has a Windows PC with SketchUp, so I’m thinking of using Git/GitHub to develop on Linux and then test the extension on his PC.

Is this a good workflow? Can I do most of the development on Linux and only use SketchUp on Windows for testing and debugging?

What would be the best setup/workflow for this situation?

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

2 comments sorted by

1

u/quantgorithm 1d ago

Of course you can develop anywhere but it's going to be hard for you to test your plugin without SKP itself. At the end of the day, all code is just some form of text files.

1

u/Neither_Limit_4595 15h ago

That split can work. Keep the source in Git and develop normal Ruby logic on Linux, but plan to test every SketchUp API call on Windows. A small loader file in SketchUp's Plugins folder can point to the cloned repo, so your friend only needs to pull changes and restart or reload. Use SketchUp's Ruby Console for integration errors.