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Setting up your Pixelbook as the ultimate development tool for G Suite

For my first post I wanted to explain how easy it is to setup your Pixelbook (or any other Chromebook that supports Linux) to develop G Suite solutions.

As most of you know, developing solutions for G Suite is already super easy. All you need is the online Apps Script IDE. This is where you can manage your project, write code, add advanced API's, ...

But sometimes you want to be able to use an editor like VS Code and be able to work offline, or write in Typescript. This is where CLASP comes in. It will let you sync your G Suite Scripts offline and do some very advanced things.
What I wanted to do is show the steps needed to install from a blank Pixelbook and how to get started. To follow along please see the Totally Unscripted episode about how to setup Chrome OS.

All credit for the steps and links go to the GDE's behind the podcast Totally Unscripted, and a specific episode they did around CLASP. I recommend you subscribe to there channel.

Enabling Pixelbook for G Suite Development

  • Enable Linux on your Pixelbook
    • Open Setting and scroll to the end
    • Select Turn-On under the option for Linux
  • Install VS Code
    • Simply download VS Code to your download folder
    • Right Click on the file and select Install
  • Install NVM
    • Get latest install options from GitHub
    • As of writing it was:
    • curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.34.0/install.sh | bash
    • Make sure to run the last 3 lines before continuing
  • Install Node
    • Run nvm install 8
  • Install CLASP
    • Simply run npm i @google/clasp -g
  • Enable the API on Scripts.Google.com
  • Enable type-ahead for Apps Script
    • Run npm install --save @types/google-apps-script
    • This will enable type-ahead, making it very easy to work within VS Code for Apps Script
  • Login to CLASP
    • Login with clasp login --no-localhost
    • Copy past the URL you will get and then past the code you get from that page
    • Now you can clasp clone YourProjectID a project and start working

I also installed Android Studio, Network tools and Sublime

That is all I have setup so far, will keep posting if I make big changes to my setup.
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