The Raspberry Pi Foundation announced on 11 July 2023 that it had open-sourced the Code Editor it developed for teaching programming. At launch, Python was its first supported language, executed in the browser through Skulpt. The release split the front end and backend across different licenses, a distinction that matters to anyone embedding or adapting the software.
What the Raspberry Pi Code Editor is
The Code Editor is a browser-based environment for writing and running code, designed to reduce setup barriers for learners. The Foundation described its intended audience as young people aged 7 and older, including school students, Code Club and CoderDojo participants, and learners at home. It said learners could run code in a browser without installing a local development environment.
This is an educational software release, not a Raspberry Pi hardware announcement. The Foundation said organizations interested in using the editor, as well as potential funders, could contact it about the project.
How the editor worked at launch
Python ran in the browser
In its 11 July 2023 announcement, the Foundation said the editor’s front end could work on its own and ran Python through Skulpt, an in-browser implementation of Python. Phil Howell, the announcement’s author, explained: “That’s why we decided to design the front end of the Editor to work in a standalone capacity, with Python executed through Skulpt, an entirely in-browser implementation of Python, and code changes persisted in local storage by default.” This describes the Foundation’s architecture at that time, not an independent performance assessment.
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Editing and saving code
The interface used CodeMirror, with custom extensions for the Foundation’s learning content. The 2023 announcement said code changes were saved in the browser’s local storage by default. Signed-in learners could save through a Foundation account using the backend, and learners could also download their code. The Foundation summarized the experience as: “The Editor lets you run code straight in the browser, with no setup required.”
For the backend described in July 2023, the announcement identified REST and GraphQL endpoints and PostgreSQL hosted on Heroku. That is a dated description of the service at announcement time, not confirmation of its current hosting arrangement.
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What the open-source release lets people do
The Foundation released separate repositories for the user interface and the API. The current editor-ui repository describes a web component that can be embedded in other sites. Its README documents configuration for starter code, instructions, locale, project identifiers, authentication, output panels, and API endpoints; it also describes a Vite-based build and versioned web-component bundles.
The current editor-api repository describes a Rails application hosted at editor-api.raspberrypi.org. It provides REST and GraphQL mechanisms for authentication and project persistence, as well as management of schools, classes, lessons, teachers, and students for Code Editor for Education. These repository descriptions reflect the projects’ current documentation, distinct from the July 2023 architecture snapshot.
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Licenses: front end and backend are different
The Foundation’s announcement assigned the front end the Apache License 2.0 and the backend the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 (AGPLv3). Do not treat this as a single license covering both repositories. In particular, the Foundation noted that the backend’s copyleft terms apply to derived works. The current API repository labels its license AGPL-3.0.
Organizations planning to modify, embed, or deploy the software should read the license files in the specific repositories and assess the terms for their intended use. A short summary cannot resolve how a license applies to a particular product or deployment.
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Supported languages: launch state and later documentation
Python was the first language supported when the open-source release was announced in July 2023. The Foundation’s later editor-ui contribution guide describes support for text-based Python, CSS, and HTML and characterizes the editor as currently in beta. That later repository description should not be read as evidence that CSS and HTML were supported at the initial release.
Contributing to the project
The Foundation invited users to report bugs and feedback through GitHub issues and to contribute changes through pull requests. The 2023 announcement said contributors retained copyright; it also asked backend contributors to allow the Foundation to reserve the right to reuse their contribution. Contributors should consult the current repository contribution instructions before submitting work, since those are the practical guidance for present participation.
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