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Mailing lists / fpc-other / 2008-12

Other IDEs

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Paul Robinson

Long time reader, first time poster, or else I haven't posted in a long time.

Richard Ward, among others, talks about the possibility of some other IDEs for use with FPC, perhaps something written in Pascal such that it could be used as a teaching tool.

If you want to teach how to write an IDE or understand how one is written, that might be a laudable goal. But I think that for people who would want to use Pascal professionally, we need something better. I think Lazarus was a nice idea, if it had come out when Turbo Pascal 5.5 was around, as that is basically of which it is a clone, or a workalike if you want to be more charitable.

The IDE such as Delphi provides is fairly good, and unless you're going to be developing for text environments it is the way to go. And the IDE such as what was provided by Visual Basic is even better than the one for Delphi because it gave a much better environment for doing on-the-fly development. Anyone who dismisses what Visual Basic was as a toy never used it in version 6 or in .NET as it can be used for professional development.

But I think if all we want is a language to teach programming then we're not going to get much attention or interest from professional developers. As soon as someone goes through the language and the tools, and finds that they can't get certain professional development done, they're going to move on to something else.

My thought is, if we want people to consider FPC as a serious, professional-class application, it needs to interface to a serious, professional-class IDE and use as much of the provided features as is available. And as I see it, that means that FPC should be able to be used with Eclipse.

As I've been busy with other things and haven't had a chance to use either lately, I haven't had a chance to check; if it already does so, please excuse me. But I suspect this conversation would not be taking place if it was runnable full-featured under Eclipse. Probably a lot of very unsexy and tedious work, thus it hasn't been done.

I believe Eclipse provides a lot of nice features including identifier lookup and run-time tracing and variable examination. These sort of things should be available, or if they are not present the capability of having them should be present. I've been busy so I haven't looked at FPC much lately but I'm thinking about it more now. But there are things that need to be done if they're not already. Better debugging support so that applications which are not production can get better "while running" analysis including real-time monitoring and control of execution, variable values and code paths. I know some of this might not be significant for some people but it will be to others.

I could probably say more but I think I'm still on point and so I'll stop here rather than go on and bore people, although I might already have done so. :)

----
Paul Robinson http://paul-robinson.us (My Website) "Above all else... We shall go on..." _"...And continue!"_ "The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that no one learns the lessons that history teaches us."

Florian Klaempfl
to Paul Robinson
Show quoted text 6 lines
My thought is, if we want people to consider FPC as a serious, professional-class application, it needs to interface to a serious, professional-class IDE and use as much of the provided features as is available. And as I see it, that means that FPC should be able to be used with Eclipse.

You really consider Eclipse as a good IDE? I'am really shocked everytime I hear this. Eclipse is *terrible* slow and featurewise VS runs circles around Eclipse.

Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho
to Paul Robinson: Long time reader, first time poster, or else I haven't posted in a long time. Richard…
Paul Robinson wrote
If you want to teach how to write an IDE or understand how one is written, that might be a laudable goal. But I think that for people who would want to use Pascal professionally, we need something better. I think Lazarus was a nice idea, if it had come out when Turbo Pascal 5.5 was around, as that is basically of which it is a clone, or a workalike if you want to be more charitable.

Turbo Pascal 5?

I think you don't know what Lazarus is. Every once in a while someone takes a look at the Free Pascal IDE and thinks it is Lazarus.

This is Lazarus:

http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Image:Lazarusmac0.9.25.jpg

http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Image:Lazarus_Windows_XP.PNG

Lazarus doesn't come pre-installed with Free Pascal, you need to download it separately. Lazarus for Windows already includes Free Pascal in it's installer:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=89339

Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho
Mark J. Wood
to Paul Robinson: Long time reader, first time poster, or else I haven't posted in a long time. Richard…

Excellent comment.

Mark.

Paul Robinson wrote 28 lines
Long time reader, first time poster, or else I haven't posted in a long time. Richard Ward, among others, talks about the possibility of some other IDEs for use with FPC, perhaps something written in Pascal such that it could be used as a teaching tool. If you want to teach how to write an IDE or understand how one is written, that might be a laudable goal. But I think that for people who would want to use Pascal professionally, we need something better. I think Lazarus was a nice idea, if it had come out when Turbo Pascal 5.5 was around, as that is basically of which it is a clone, or a workalike if you want to be more charitable. The IDE such as Delphi provides is fairly good, and unless you're going to be developing for text environments it is the way to go. And the IDE such as what was provided by Visual Basic is even better than the one for Delphi because it gave a much better environment for doing on-the-fly development. Anyone who dismisses what Visual Basic was as a toy never used it in version 6 or in .NET as it can be used for professional development. But I think if all we want is a language to teach programming then we're not going to get much attention or interest from professional developers. As soon as someone goes through the language and the tools, and finds that they can't get certain professional development done, they're going to move on to something else. My thought is, if we want people to consider FPC as a serious, professional-class application, it needs to interface to a serious, professional-class IDE and use as much of the provided features as is available. And as I see it, that means that FPC should be able to be used with Eclipse. As I've been busy with other things and haven't had a chance to use either lately, I haven't had a chance to check; if it already does so, please excuse me. But I suspect this conversation would not be taking place if it was runnable full-featured under Eclipse. Probably a lot of very unsexy and tedious work, thus it hasn't been done. I believe Eclipse provides a lot of nice features including identifier lookup and run-time tracing and variable examination. These sort of things should be available, or if they are not present the capability of having them should be present. I've been busy so I haven't looked at FPC much lately but I'm thinking about it more now. But there are things that need to be done if they're not already. Better debugging support so that applications which are not production can get better "while running" analysis including real-time monitoring and control of execution, variable values and code paths. I know some of this might not be significant for some people but it will be to others. I could probably say more but I think I'm still on point and so I'll stop here rather than go on and bore people, although I might already have done so. :) ---- Paul Robinson http://paul-robinson.us (My Website) "Above all else... We shall go on..." _"...And continue!"_ "The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that no one learns the lessons that history teaches us." _______________________________________________ fpc-other maillist - http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-other
Graeme Geldenhuys
to Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho: Turbo Pascal 5? I think you don't know what Lazarus is. Every once in a while someone…
Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho wrote 5 lines
Turbo Pascal 5? I think you don't know what Lazarus is. Every once in a while someone takes a look at the Free Pascal IDE and thinks it is Lazarus.

I agree. I think people get confused between Lazarus IDE (GUI based and separate project) and the Free Pascal IDE (console based) programs.

Show quoted text 5 lines
This is Lazarus: http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Image:Lazarusmac0.9.25.jpg http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Image:Lazarus_Windows_XP.PNG

And the Linux screenshot... ;-)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/59/Lazarus_software_sshot.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_(software)

Paul, I believe you got confused. I cleaned by glasses and double checked... and still can't see the resemblance of the Lazarus IDE to Turbo Pascal. ;-)

Regards,
- Graeme -

_______________________________________________
fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit
http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/

Rimgaudas Laucius
to Florian Klaempfl: You really consider Eclipse as a good IDE? I'am really shocked everytime I hear this.…

Hi,

In my opinion Eclipse is very good open source IDE. I have been working with it for 2 years and don't have any complaints. I even had idea to write Free Pascal plugin for Eclipse.

Florian Klaempfl rašė:

Show quoted text 17 lines
Paul Robinson schrieb: > My thought is, if we want people to consider FPC as a serious, > professional-class application, it needs to interface to a serious, > professional-class IDE and use as much of the provided features as is > available. And as I see it, that means that FPC should be able to be > used with Eclipse. > You really consider Eclipse as a good IDE? I'am really shocked everytime I hear this. Eclipse is *terrible* slow and featurewise VS runs circles around Eclipse. _______________________________________________ fpc-other maillist - http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-other
Marco van de Voort
to Paul Robinson: Long time reader, first time poster, or else I haven't posted in a long time. Richard…

In our previous episode, Paul Robinson said:

Show quoted text 7 lines
The IDE such as Delphi provides is fairly good, and unless you're going to be developing for text environments it is the way to go. And the IDE such as what was provided by Visual Basic is even better than the one for Delphi because it gave a much better environment for doing on-the-fly development. Anyone who dismisses what Visual Basic was as a toy never used it in version 6 or in .NET as it can be used for professional development.

If you really want to further this, compare all contendents head to head, and make a deeper analysis of the differences and what they actually provide. (IOW does the typically use case of a feature really fit at all?)

I never understood the heated debates over VB-the-IDE. The few times I used it (after Delphi) gave me a feeling of same old, same old. But typically I'm not a man that tries to solve everything designtime, also in Delphi.

Show quoted text 5 lines
But I think if all we want is a language to teach programming then we're not going to get much attention or interest from professional developers. As soon as someone goes through the language and the tools, and finds that they can't get certain professional development done, they're going to move on to something else.

I'm afraid this is so vague and opinionated that it is next to useless. We need detailed data and comparisons, not opinions that are cast down from an ivory tower of "professionalism".

And that is even stepping over the fact that the common paths might be exactly what you want to avoid, since the commercial IDEs already cover it.

Show quoted text 5 lines
My thought is, if we want people to consider FPC as a serious, professional-class application, it needs to interface to a serious, professional-class IDE and use as much of the provided features as is available. And as I see it, that means that FPC should be able to be used with Eclipse.

Which has been said before, but nobody has said why?

I believe Eclipse provides a lot of nice features including identifier lookup and run-time tracing and variable examination.

Some of these are provided by Lazarus too. And worse, afaik it isn't Eclipse that provides these, but (partially) language dependant plugins. One can't expect them to cater to FPC automatically (or even at all)

Show quoted text 5 lines
are things that need to be done if they're not already. Better debugging support so that applications which are not production can get better "while running" analysis including real-time monitoring and control of execution, variable values and code paths. I know some of this might not be significant for some people but it will be to others.

The debugging problem is mostly a GDB problem, and both Lazarus and Eclipse use GDB. So there is not much to be expected from Eclipse in that field.

I could probably say more but I think I'm still on point and so I'll stop here rather than go on and bore people, although I might already have done so. :)

To be honest, I've seen nothing but the usual rants where something is compared to something where heaps of fulltime programmers work on, meaning Eclipse and the default plugins bundled with them.

THAT is the crucial problem with FPC, not Lazarus vs Eclipse. If you are willing to fund such a team, by all means, do. You can even have a say about direction.

Seriously, if you really want to contribute to this discussion, go into detail, describe problems, dissect Eclipse to see what makes it tick, and what is language dependant. THOSE are things that might give a new perspective on a changed situation. Not these kinds of gratituous comparisons.

Graeme Geldenhuys
to Marco van de Voort
Marco van de Voort wrote 8 lines
> are things that need to be done if they're not already. Better debugging > support so that applications which are not production can get better > "while running" analysis including real-time monitoring and control of > execution, variable values and code paths. I know some of this might not > be significant for some people but it will be to others. The debugging problem is mostly a GDB problem, and both Lazarus and Eclipse use GDB. So there is not much to be expected from Eclipse in that field.

Correct. Simply adding new language support into Eclipse is not going to magically solve all the problems. For example: after adding new language support, you need to *also* add new debugger support. Not a trivial task!

http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Debugger/how-to.html

Regards,
- Graeme -

_______________________________________________
fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit
http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/