Re: What IDE features do we need?

[Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> 	    all these "intellisense", code browsing and refactoring
> 	    things.
>
> Could you tell us in a way that would be clear to those of us who
> don't already know what this refers to?

Well, *intellisense* is an intelligent completion.  For example, let's
say in Java I have an instance of a class foo, then typing

   myFooInstance.<completion-key>

will complete all field and method names, that are applicable in that
context, e.g. they're defined in the class Foo or one of its super
classes and they have the correct visibility.  The same can be done when
completing function parameters.  For example, if there's a method
doMagic(Bar bar) in class Foo, then

   myFooInstance.doMagic(<completion-key>

will only propose local and global variables of class Bar or
function/method calls that return a reference to a Bar instance.

With *browsing* one means the ability to quickly grasp all informations
of the classes and functions.  For example, if point is on an instance
of Foo, a simple command should take me to its definition.  Some more
advanced queries could be

  - Find all places in subclasses of Foo, where the method
    Foo.doMagic(Bar bar) is overwritten.

  - Find all function calls of Foo.doMagic()

*Refactoring* basically means restructuring the code, so that it's more
clean and maintainable.  Some common refactorings are:

  - Extract method: Mark a region in a long method, say "Extract
    method", the IDE asks for a name and then creates a new method which
    contains the code of the region.  The parameters and the new
    function call replacing the extracted code are figured out
    automagically.

  - Simple renaming: You say rename at any part of the code, may it be a
    variable, a class or a function.  That will rename every occurence
    in a semantic correct manner.  If you rename doMagic(), every call
    in the whole project will be renamed, default or overwriting
    definitions in super/sub classes will be renamed, the JavaDoc source
    documentation will be adapted and so on.  In Java, if you rename a
    class, the file has to be renamed as well.

  - Change the signature of a method, ...

All these features (and much more) work out of the box with the Eclipse
IDE for Java.

Bye,
Tassilo