Rad Pro: Development without platform.io

[Memorandlum]

Well, my coding knowledge is dusty, I traced the radpro sources a little bit but with the use of just an texteditor it is not that easy
as I thought it would be ...but it's much easier than I thought it would be. ^^" No assembler but it looks like oop and not C?

For a better overview and playing with the code, I installed VScode on my linux x64 client but had to recognized
that platform.io does'n work under VScode linux64?!? Is platform.io necessary to build up the firmware?
I think all necessary modules are present in the sources and I should be able to build up the firmware anyways?
Under what OS has VScode to run to let use of platform.io or is there an alterative extension for platform.io with the hardware
typicals that also will do the job?
thx