JetBrains just announced their release of their Amazon Web Services Toolkit for Rider. For those that aren’t familiar with it, Rider is JetBrains’ cross-platform .NET IDE. Rider is based on JetBrains’ IntelliJ platform and ReSharper, and can be considered a direct competitor to Visual Studio. It is also considerably less expensive then is Visual Studio. If you don’t already have Rider, you can download a 30-day trial version at their site.
NOTE: There is actually more work that needs to be done to fully configure your system to support the AWS Toolkit in Rider. These steps include:
- An AWS account configured with the correct permissions. Create a free AWS account here.
- The AWS CLI (Command Line Interface) and AWS SAM (Serverless Application Model) CLI tools, which the plugin uses to build, deploy and invoke your code. SAM Instructions are several steps long and not trivial. The regular CLI install steps, shown here, are also not trivial.
- .NET Core 2.0 or 2.1. It’s not enough to just have .NET Core 3.0 or above installed. Make sure you’re running tests on the same version you’re targeting. Instructions
- The SAM CLI will download and create a container to invoke your Lambda locally. Instructions (Should be covered in the CLIs, but just in case)
Install the Toolkit
Before we can walk through the new toolkit, we have to get it installed. Installing the toolkit is simple once all the prerequisites are completed. The directions are available from the AWS site here. I have created my own version of these directions below because the sample on the AWS site is based upon the IntelliJ IDE rather than the Rider IDE so some of the steps are slightly unclear or look different.
- Open Rider. You do the installation of tool kits through the IDE rather than installing them outside of the context of the IDE (like a lot of the Visual Studio tool kits)
- Select Configure on the splash screen as shown below.
- Select Plugins on the drop-down menu. This will bring up the Plugins
- Search for “AWS”. You should get a list of plugins, including the AWS Toolkit.
- Install it.
- After installing, you will be asked to restart the IDE. You should probably go ahead and follow those directions. I didn’t try NOT doing it, but I am a firm believer in the usefulness of “turning it off and on”; so I am all over it when the manufacturer tells me to take that step.
- Once the application is restarted, selecting New Solution will show you that there is a new solution template available, the AWS Serverless Application, as shown below.
- Go ahead and Create the solution named HelloWorld. It may be a little predictable, but HelloWorld is still the gold standard of initial applications… Rider will go ahead and load the solution once it is completed and then open the README.md file.
Configure your connection to AWS
If you have already connected to AWS through the CLI or another toolkit or IDE, you should see the following in the bottom left corner of the IDE:
If not, follow the instructions for Configuring the AWS CLI here. This will setup your default profile. You will probably have to restart Rider after setting up your credentials.
Once Rider is restarted, you will see a notification on the bottom-right of the window that says “No credentials selected.” Before you do what I did and roll your eyes, muttering “OMG” under your breath, click on that message (which is really a button)
And find out that it is actually a menu. Select the credential from the drop-down (it is probably called Default)
And you’ll see that the it no longer says “No credentials selected.” Congratulations, you are connected!
