Re: IDE

[John Wiegley <johnw@newartisans.com>]

>>>>> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> I wasn't aware that the IDE landscape might have changed in such a
> significant way recently. This discussion seems to focus on details, which
> seems to indicate no such radical changes happened. But I'm not an expert,
> so maybe you are right.
> 
> I did suggest up-thread to come up with a list of main features we think an
> Emacs IDE should have. If that is what you have in mind, I obviously agree.

That's great, Eli. I don't know if the landscape has really changed or not,
only that I'd love to take a step back together and survey the field: if for
no other reason than to help us feel we've reached our conclusions on the same
footing. Who knows, we may end up where we are now; except that given the
current level of disgruntlement, I'd be surprised by that outcome as well.

My list of main features from a previous message (and this is just a draft,
subject to change) is:

  indentation (see above)
  reformatting
  syntax highlighting (font-lock)
  help at point
  documentation lookup (sadly, fewer projects use Info these days)
  completion
  refactoring
  semantic editing (for example, paredit)
  compilation (M-x compile)
  live compilation (flymake/flycheck)
  REPL (comint)
  running tests
  debugging (GUD)
  version control (CV)
  profiling
  code coverage
  app interaction

I'll refine this shortly and come back with a better list, and then we can
start new threads for each sub-area, and discover what expertise we already
have in those areas within the community.

BTW- I used to work at Borland on their C++Builder IDE, and I've worked full
time on Java J2EE projects using IntelliJ, so that is the basis for some of my
opinions about IDEs.

> In any case, CEDET is not an EDE, AFAIK. It is an infrastructure and a set
> of tools for building an IDE. IOW, it's neither a hammer nor a screwdriver,
> but something that allows us to make one or the other (or something else
> entirely). So it could very well be a good basis for an Emacs IDE.

It could be! I'm pretty sure it will come up in discussions again shortly,
with some valuable experiences to add, and perhaps even code.

John