# What external tools do you use for Ignition development, and why?

**URL:** <https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/what-external-tools-do-you-use-for-ignition-development-and-why/93759>\
**Category:** Ignition\
**Created:** [July 25, 2024, 5:07pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/what-external-tools-do-you-use-for-ignition-development-and-why/93759 "2024-07-25T17:07:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 53

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**Author:** ![kgamble](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/kgamble/32/8019_2.png) [@kgamble](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/kgamble)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2025, 4:28pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/what-external-tools-do-you-use-for-ignition-development-and-why/93759/53 "2025-03-28T16:28:23Z")

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This is better than I could have presented it! Lol, I love it!

I didn't see you mention it, however if you open a VS Code Workspace, you can have VS Code automatically trigger the gateway project scan for you whenever you save project scripts. If you have a `docker-compose.yaml` file for your project, It should attempt to auto-generate the following settings structure in your workspace settings, however if it cant auto-detect it from a docker-compose.yaml you can just add it in yourself.

```json
	"settings": {
        "ignitionFlint.ignitionGateways": [
          {
            "label": "Frontend",
            "address": "https://frontend.localtest.me", 
            "projectPaths": [ #The relative filesystem path to your ignition projects root directory.
              "temp/projects"
            ],
            "updateDesignerOnSave": true,
            "forceUpdateDesigner": true,
            "supportsProjectScanEndpoint": true
          }
        ]
	}

```

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