Re: What a modern collaboration toolkit looks like

[Nick Roberts <nickrob@snap.net.nz>]

Trey Jackson writes:
 > On Jan 6, 2008 10:09 AM, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
 > 
 > >    The graphical improvements to GUD are nice, but as far as I can see,
 > > the new
 > >    features are limited to viewing GUD data.
 > >
 > > Isn't that what an IDE is?  Something to let you look at execution
 > > data and source code in a convenient coordinated way?
 > 
 > 
 > As in my other email, an IDE is often more - pulling together bug tracking,
 > plug-ins for profilers, code browsers, project planning, etc.  The improved
 > GUD is nice, but other IDEs have a lot more.   (if you want to want to go
 > that route))

Projects like Eclipse will always have "a lot more" because they have millions
of dollars of investment behind them.

 > >    project management (files & build)
 > >
 > > What does that mean?  Is it some alternative to makefiles?
 > >
 > 
 > Yeah, a number of IDEs have this (GreenHills, MSVS).  I find them awkward
 > and confusing.  My understanding is that the IDE then knows about all the
 > files in the 'project' and can automatically generate tags, do class
 > browsing, and other such things.

And if you want to move your code to another IDE presumably it's difficult
because the metadata storing the project information is unique to each IDE.

 >...
 > >    manage window configurations (Eclipse calls them perspectives)
 > >
 > > I would like to know more about this.  Emacs lacks convenient features
 > > to usefully save and adjust window configurations, and it would be nice
 > > to add that as a general feature.
 > >
 > 
 > I don't know much about it, just that it appears that you can set up window
 > configurations for each task, e.g. the window arrangement for the new
 > GUD-ui, one for actually coding (perhaps with class browser (ECB?)), one for
 > interacting with VCS, etc.  This does appear to be a high return on
 > investment kind of project.

Eclipse can use perspectives because it's an IDE, and no more: the user can't
suddenly decide to write an e-mail, read news or view images.  I know
ECB uses dedicated windows just like gdb-ui.el to constrain the display, I'm
not sure that they would work well together.  It may be a high return but I
don't think it's a trivial task to make something workable.

 > ...
 > side note: this is why I brought up the whole IDE subject, because perhaps
 > some of the functionality would be found to be useful...

I don't think anyone would disagree.

-- 
Nick                                           http://www.inet.net.nz/~nickrob