Deprecation Notice: Stitch Desktop

[adam-coster]

⚠️We're deprecating Stitch Desktop in favor of Stitch for VSCode.⚠️

The source code has been moved to a separate repo for archival purposes: https://github.com/bscotch/stitch-desktop

Why?

We decided to create Stitch for VSCode to allow us to develop a custom code-editing experience for our GameMaker projects. As Stitch for VSCode has become more feature-complete, it has already cannibalized most of the features of Stitch Desktop.

Rather than maintain two projects with highly-overlapping features, we'll be deprecating Stitch Desktop and putting all of our time into Stitch for VSCode instead.

What's VSCode?

Visual Studio Code (VSCode) is a ✨FREE✨, general text/code editor maintained by Microsoft. It has an enormous community and is highly extendable via their extensions system.

We use it because it has stellar tooling for web development built in, and the community extensions provide support for nearly everything else we need to edit. It's also the native home for GitHub Copilot, which we use extensively.

What's "Stitch for VSCode"?

Stitch for VSCode is a VSCode extension that we are developing and maintaining. It provides essential features for editing GameMaker projects, and centralizes our other GameMaker-related tools.

Benefits

• We get to leverage the VSCode APIs to develop and deploy features far more rapidly than we could with an entirely custom desktop app
• We can centralize all code and project management features into a single application
• Stitch for VSCode users can leverage the entire VSCode extension ecosystem along with Stitch's features
• Community members can create their own VSCode extensions that supplement Stitch for VSCode, without having to integrate those directly with our project

Will Stitch Desktop still be available?

In short: YES!

Existing releases will still be downloadable, and the code has been moved to a public archive: https://github.com/bscotch/stitch-desktop

Stitch Desktop only requires one remote resource, and that resource is also used by Stitch for VSCode. In other words, Stitch Desktop will continue work as before for the foreseeable future.

Will Stitch Desktop get any more updates or bugfixes?

Nope.

What features are missing from Stitch for VSCode?

As of the current version (v1.29.0), Stitch for VSCode has all Stitch Desktop features (and many more!), with the following exceptions:

• Audio asset management (we no longer need this feature, so it will NOT be ported to VSCode)
• Listing/Finding Projects (the use of VSCode removes the need for this feature)