Use a more directory/file based paradigm for loading and saving files

[dss0427]

The FLL team I'm coaching has 12 python files for their robot and runs. Right now, if we want to switch branches, they have to 'delete' all 12 files from pybricks. I don't see a way to do this other than file by file. If a directory/file paradigm was used, one could close the current directory and open a different one, and pybricks could automatically start using the newly opened files.

Also, I think the warning one gets when closing a file out of pybricks seems a little harsh. "The file 'file.py' will be permanently deleted. This cannot be undone." The file isn't actually permanently deleted. It still exists. But, it is being removed from pybricks. The warning should state that. And if a directory/file paradigm is used, the user could be warned that the file has not been saved.

[dlech]

Right now, if we want to switch branches

For teams that are ready for version control, we usually recommend switching to VS Code.

The file isn't actually permanently deleted. It still exists.

Only if the user backed it up, right?

[dss0427]

It is unclear how VS Code and Pybricks integrate together. The FLL Team I'm coaching 2 years ago used Spike Prime block coding, last year they use Pybricks block coding, and this year they wanted to use text based Pybricks. One of the 6 8th graders is into programming and uses VS Code for other things he writes so he'd like to use VS Code for this. The other 5 wouldn't care where the code is written. Is there documentation or a description of how to use VS Code? At the beginning of the season the one kid would use VS Code, but then he would have to save it from VS Code and then load it into Pybricks. It wasn't seamless. They are also using GitHub, but at the moment that is done separately. Would be nice if Pybricks, VS Code, and GitHub all worked together, but I'm not sure how to do that.

[jaguilar]

I don't know what the recommended way is, but so far I have only used VSCode and I have been using pybricksdev to do the things you do with pybricks-code -- mostly uploading and launching programs.

There's a lot of documentation on there but the long and the short of it is.

• Install the appropriate udev rules, then
• pipx run pybricksdev run ble demo/shortdemo.py (or whatever your program is)

You can configure tasks.json to make this easier to do with the push of a button.

[dsplaisted]

This team has a repo with detailed instructions on how to get set up with VS Code and pybricks: https://github.com/[FLL-Team-24277/FLL-Fall-2025-Unearthed](https://github.com/FLL-Team-24277/FLL-Fall-2025-Unearthed)

They have a lot of customization in their code which you may want to modify or get rid of.

There's also this new VS code extension which looks amazing, though I haven't yet tried it out personally: https://github.com/afarago/blocklypy-vscode

[dsplaisted]

For teams that are ready for version control, we usually recommend switching to VS Code.

Is there a good way to use version control (and possibly VS Code) if you're using blocks programming?

[dlech]

Not exactly a "good" way, but you can access the generated Python code from the blocks. This includes comments that contain the block program too. You could copy the Python code to a git repository and commit it when you want to take a snapshot. But only the Python part of the diff will be intelligible. And to restore from a previous commit, you would need to manually import the file back into Pybricks Code.