
Kite Adds Linux Support, Opens Line-of-Code Completions to More Python Devs - adamsmith
https://kite.com/blog/kite-adds-linux-support-opens-line-of-code-completions-to-more-python-devs
======
adamsmith
After years of development and a whole lot of anticipation, Kite is now
available on Linux! You can download it for free at kite.com/linux.

Kite helps Python developers be more productive with its Line-of-Code
Completions, and integrates as a plugin into PyCharm, IntelliJ, VS Code, Atom,
Sublime, and Vim. We're thrilled to be providing Kite for free to a broader
open source community with this launch.

While we first expected to ship support for Linux about a year and a half ago,
it’s taken a bit longer to complete all the necessary improvements to Kite’s
core features before expanding the product. On the bright side, this means
that Kite for Linux is of much higher quality today than it would have been in
2017 or 2018.

Even since January we've improved our autocompletion engine leading to a 2x
increase in the number of times Kite users select one of Kite's Line-of-Code
Completions while coding.

We're really looking forward to feedback on this release from all the Linux +
Python users out there! We'll be online to answer your questions here today.

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sqs
Sourcegraph CEO here. Congrats to the Kite team! As a desktop Linux user
(Ubuntu and ChromeOS), I am excited to see this.

How are you managing the maintenance of multiple editor extensions? Do you use
some kind of architecture where there is a common background process with most
of the logic and a simple adapter per-editor? How many people on your team are
actually writing code against editor extension APIs?

~~~
adamsmith
Yes we use a headless process that the editor plugins talk to. Our heads-up-
display app also talks to this headless process. We put as much functionality
there as possible and try to keep the plugins/HUD as small as possible.

It’s still a challenge with this approach. We have to be careful what new
surface area we add to plugins, and have rolled back editor features that
users don’t engage with.

We also keep the API well documented and have a detailed product spec that the
editors try to adhere to. The product spec can be challenging because each
editor API supports slightly different types of interactions.

So after all of these strategies the main thing making it work is the team!

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kibrael
The integrated tool tips for function signatures have been a real time saver
for me. Glad to see that Linux support is now available!

~~~
adamsmith
Great to hear Kite has been a useful part of your workflow, thanks for being a
user!

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ehrosenberg
Finally, Kite! I've been waiting a long time for this.

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utafric
what distros are supported?

~~~
adamsmith
We test Kite on Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Arch Linux, Linux Mint, and openSUSE.
It also works across a variety of desktops, including KDE, XFCE, Gnome 2, and
Gnome 3. We want Kite for Linux to support essentially every distribution and
would love user feedback to help with this!

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90litshi99
didn't u send code to your servers before? that still happening??

~~~
adamsmith
Kite used to be cloud-powered which meant users had to trust us with their
code.

In January we announced "going cloudless" \-- we moved all processing back to
the client and code is no longer sent to our servers. (You can find the blog
post announcing this here @ [https://kite.com/blog/launching-line-of-code-
completions-goi...](https://kite.com/blog/launching-line-of-code-completions-
going-cloudless-and-17-million-in-funding))

