Re: Time to throw away my LOVE - Emacs ?

[Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>]

Barak Zalstein <no_spam@no_spam.net> wrote on Wed, 09 Jun 2004 04:01:36 -0400:
> Alan Mackenzie wrote:
>> I think you've got a particular scenario in mind here.  Would you like to
>> spell it out in detail?  TIA.

> The specific scenario I have in mind is using Microsoft Visual Studio
> for development without giving up on Emacs as the IDE.

You see Emacs as an _IDE_?  I see Emacs rather as an editor, though one
with the ability usefully to invoke outside tools.  That's quite a
fundamental difference between us.

> Earlier posting about developing using Java SDK implies that Emacs
> versus a more specific development tool is a common problem across
> multiple platforms and programming languages.

OK, I'm following you now.

> There are various attemts to "escape", from exporting Makefiles (now
> you can M-x compile) up to http://www.atnetsend.net/computing/VisEmacs/
> and http://codingstyle.com/articles/using-ms-vcpp-with-gnu-wine.html
> but OTOH, the vendor IDE will automatically take care of all little
> nuances - class wizards, browse info, graphical resource editors,
> source control integration and debugging environment to name few.

And it is just this which bloats that program into (for me at least)
almost unmanageable complexity, as I was saying a post or two ago.

> I don't think that teaching Emacs to access all those features in a
> MSDEV generated binary is feasible nor productive in the long run, and
> if you choose the GNU toolchain instead of Visual in order to make
> Emacs happy, you will suffer from the incomatibility consequence that
> others will not encounter (again, counterproductive).

I think you're not making enough distinction between Emacs (as an editor)
and the GNU toolchain (make, etc.).  I also wouldn't expect using the
G.T. alongside of MS VS to work well (though I'd love to hear from
somebody with experience to the contrary ;-).  But using Emacs (the
editor) in an MS VS project should work without too much problem.

> My current impression from trying development with Emacs and Visual
> cuncurrently is that it can be somewhat compared to two mail clients
> competing on the same pop3 account (that is you, the developer).  In
> the end one of them has to go, and it will be the one which is
> incompatible.

Again, the difference between "Emacs the editor" and "Emacs the IDE".
But how much productivity will you be losing simply because the MS VS
editor isn't very good?  My personal choice here would be to do all
editing, browsing etc., in a separate Emacs (although I believe it's
possible to embed Emacs within MS VC), then use MS VC for building and
testing.  This, by cleanly partitioning the task, appreciably reduces the
combined complexity.

> Barak

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Munich, Germany)
Email: aacm@muuc.dee; to decode, wherever there is a repeated letter
(like "aa"), remove half of them (leaving, say, "a").