How to develop remotely in PyCharm?

Question

I have a lab system (with a hardware piece attached to it) which has some python test scripts. The test script sends commands to the attached hardware and receives response.

I don't want to work on the lab computer all the time. Currently, I'm using SSH from my local machine to the lab computer and using the shell to modify the scripts, run the commands etc. Using nano is cumbersome especially while debugging. I want to use an IDE (Pycharm) on my local machine in order to edit and run the scripts on the remote server. Pycharm has remote interpreters which uses the remote python but I want to be able to access and modify the scripts too, just like SSH from terminal.

How can I do that?

Solution 1

PyCharm (Professional Edition only) is also capable of Deployments. You can upload/download files via SFTP directly within Pycharm and run your scripts remotely.

You can visit the following pages for further instructions on how to set everything up:

• Setting up a deployment
• Configuring a remote interpreter

Solution 2

Yes, PyCharm Professional Edition can do this. Since PyCharm 2018.1 setting up a remote interpreter also automatically sets up deployment. If you have automatic deployments configured (Tools | Deployment | Automatic Deployment) all changes will automatically be uploaded to your SSH box.

See here for a tutorial on configuring an SSH box in PyCharm Professional Edition: https://blog.jetbrains.com/pycharm/2018/04/running-flask-with-an-ssh-remote-python-interpreter/