Open code for Edge drivers?

Hi

Is there a way to see the code of an Edge driver, if you install it via the link?

I know many developers include the install link, and also their Github link - but for those drivers that come from developers without a public Github (or similar) resource, can we get to the code?

Thanks

Hi, @Hendo25!

No, it is not possible. If your concern is regarding the driver’s configuration to confirm it won’t do anything unauthorized, here’s a discussion about it:

If you want to make a copy of it and modify it, you need to ask the original developer if he/she wants to share it with you.

Hi @nayelyz - thank you for confirming this so quickly.

My reason for asking is less about doing something unauthorized, and more about my own learning.

My developer days are long behind me - however, I’ve still enjoyed a little tinker with the Groovy DTHs to adapt certain things to my devices, and without building upon someone else’s code, there is no way I would have been able to do this.

Seeing the code has been an extremely helpful learning experience.

I understand that Smartthings want to move away from the Copy and Paste code into the IDE, to make it easier for some users to just click a link to install a driver.

But what about for those that are trying to learn? I rely massively on the efforts of community members, and have great admiration and appreciation for those developers that put out the majority of drivers.

But what if they all went private in the long term? What if Edge drivers were to become link only, and no Github code? (And possibly even chargeable products!). In the long run I think that would slow down speed of development and prohibit new developers.

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Uploading the code to Github is a choice from developers to share their drivers publicly and it’s not related to the way drivers can be currently shared. If you ask them privately, they might share it with you the same way, the ones that have created drivers so far are very active Community members and the team commented in the post I shared that they plan to communicate with them regarding open source drivers, but this can take a while.

On the other hand, there are plenty of samples from the official SmartThings drivers:

The developer documentation about the development and the Edge reference where you can find more specific details can also help you out.

If you’d like to see other examples, you can share your ideas and we will pass them to the internal team.

2 Likes

Thank you.

A post was split to a new topic: [Edge drivers] Questions about multichannel drivers