I've been working on a new release for Steam. It'll be my 3rd Steam release, but 1st app on Steam and also my 1st targeting the Steam Deck exclusively.
It just made sense to me that I do the dev or at least some of the dev directly on the device as that's where it'll run. It also makes testing a much quicker affair than building on one machine, pushing to the Deck and then running.
While the Steam Deck is powered by linux, it's not quite the same as a fresh linux desktop, so there are a few steps you'll need to take to get up and going with Dev on the Deck. FYI Developer Mode is not what it sounds like, and we'll need to get root access.
Before we can begin installing our tools, we'll need to set a user password before we can use sudo. Open up terminal and run: passwd.
Next, we need to disable read-only mode on your Deck sudo steamos-readonly disable.
Now we'll enable packman wit the keyring
sudo pacman-key --init
sudo pacman-key --populate archlinux
Now you;'re ready to install your dev tools. As I'm building an Electron based app for Steam, I first needed Node & npm
Now you're ready to install your dev tools. As I'm building an Electron based app for Steam, I first needed Node, npm and then electron. sudo pacman -S nodejs npm electron18
I also setup VScode, git and a few other day-to-day tools. You'll need to install whatever tool chain you need for your specific development environment, and then you'll be set.