Im awake at 4 AM cant sleep and all I can think of is the IDE situation in Ubuntu for Python. Im also thinking of what to do for 10.10 so I was thinking how about making an IDE myself. I know there is pydev for Eclipse but I dont like Eclipse because it looks and feels heavy.
All I want is:
- Syntax highlighting
- Inserting of snippets
- Intellisense (a la Visual studio) with the main Python syntax and the main linux desktop stuff like gtk, glade and Qt
- Spell check for comments and strings in the code
- To use quickly’s features in the main UI of the editor from the start of a project to release
- Sheer simplicity
So thats my IDE(a), what do you all think? Is this something that other opportunistic developers would like?
#Note: by snippets I mean from https://launchpad.net/python-snippets
So, you can’t actually get #3 easily. Python is a dynamic language which has the side effect that its design very explicitly makes static analysis impossible. In particular, this means you can’t actually manage Intellisense-like features in all but the most boring cases. The IDE cannot figure out the types of your variables.
I wouldnt expect it to what I want in the basic sense is suggestion of code going by what the user is typing. No figuring out of variable types needed other than for #4 in figuring out whats a string (” and anything after print statements) and whats a comment.
You could write a plugin for gedit, that way you’ll get #1, #2 and #6 for free
(even #4 to an extent)
I know I use gedit at the moment but for rapid development every little helps. Just having a text editor isnt the easiest way to develop.
Oh, now you agree with me.
Damn I didnt think you followed my blog you got me. Ive evolved
I think NetBeans has Python support.
It does but it sucks
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Have you tried SPE?
I would like an IDE that makes it eaiser to use gtk/glade, I’ve tried anjunta, but it isn’t very easy to use, quickly(not an IDE) is the best I’ve found so far. Personally, I have never figured out how to write the commands to use glade files in python, so I would love an IDE that made this easy.
I would love this idea. 12 years ago at the time I was at university, I learned Visual Basic that was version 5.0. Visual Basic had very simple interface (IDE) and writing a “Hello word” in GUI window was one command away.
Now I haven’t been programming for 12 years, I got a job in database administration. But I have seen a lot of talk about Python and so I have looked at this language and all of the staff (qtk, etc) and I see this option is 10-times more complicated to use then it was Visual Basic 12 years ago! You need multiple tools to do some simple GUI “hello word”. Halo!!! Make it simpler. So some IDE would be nice.
I think programming should be very easy to start, that means that I don’t need to know all technical things behind a program.
A new python centric IDE would be great. For most of my projects the environments provided by geany (linux) and notepad++ (win32) are quite what I look for.
Emacs, yo, Emacs.
http://www.enigmacurry.com/2008/05/09/emacs-as-a-powerful-python-ide/
Of course, that’s just the beginning…
It amuses me how many times a new editor has come and gone, duplicating a fraction of what Emacs can do, but Emacs has been around longer than any of them.
I dont want a text editor extended to do dev I want a simple IDE for a simple thing making dev easier on Ubuntu.
I’m not sure what the difference is, other than philosophical/religious reasons.
You don’t need to use features that you don’t want to use, and what ultimately matters is if it does what you want. Emacs can already do what you want, and is in 10.04.
If you want Quickly, use Quickly, but if you want everything an IDE can do, I don’t see the need to duplicate the efforts of the Emacs et al teams when you can just leverage their efforts.
If you just don’t want to learn new keybindings, (cua-mode 1)
If you don’t want to learn elisp… don’t. That’s why I linked to that blog entry, which shows how to use pymacs.
If you just see Emacs as an “editor” that’s been “extended” to do more, then Linux must just be a command-line OS that’s been “extended” to use a graphical interface.
If you’re avoiding learning the ins-and-outs of Emacs keyboard controls, CUA-mode will help, but since you were willing to learn to program, I don’t see how learning Emacs is such a leap.
This is all conjecture, but I’m just trying to see the logic of turning down something that already does everything for which you’re asking. If this comes off as a touch hostile, that’s not my intent, but I’m confused, and it’s early. I’m willing to hear your arguments against Emacs, and I’m not annoyed or anything. It’s just early, and I tend to be terse and slightly crass before my coffee
I just don’t understand your argument against Emacs as an IDE. Unlike many applications, when a new feature is added to Emacs it doesn’t increase complexity to the user unless they’re using that feature.
I recommend at least _trying_ Emacs before you write it off as an “extended editor”.
Want even more IDE-ness, with menus and other graphical candy? CEDET has basic support for Python.
Emacs is more than an “editor”. I see it as a work environment. I can barely script/configure my various applications (zsh, Conkeror, Emacs, mplayer, stumpwm…) but I find Emacs’ interface very intuitive; now that I’ve learned all the basics. I do alot in Emacs: IRC (via ERC), read blogs (emacs-w3m), instant messaging (ERC & bitlbee), write papers (latex), email (wl); however, you don’t have to do any of those. You can just write python code, and Emacs won’t scold you for not using any other features.
Great points but sometimes its necessary to reinvent the wheel. The reasoning behind this post was to spread the idea that having crazy ideas about how to improve things are ok. We need to dream to dare to move away from the norm. I have tried more or less everything anyone suggested as the best solutions for developing python programs on Ubuntu and was disappointed by all of them.
So maybe emacs can do some of what im asking but its not a fresh product, its not a new product and its command line only which isnt ideal for the new development generation.
Id love to make something like a simplified Visual Studio that anyone from the no experience to very experienced developers can enjoy. That makes use of the cool technologies like bzr, Quickly and all the opportunistic developer technologies being developed everyday by the Ubuntu developer community and Canonical.
I know its a crowded market but its crowded because people aim at target markets and I think I can appeal to nice set of developers.
*headdesk*
Emacs is _not_ a command-line editor.
It _can_ be used in the command-line, but if you type ‘emacs’ in a terminal in an X session you’ll get a gtk emacs frame.
You’ve never tried Emacs. You’ve not even really read about it. You’re trying to make programming ‘easy for non-programmers’ which is like making painting easy for non-painters.
Even if you only sell the primary colours people will need to learn that there’s more there.
The kind of applications that will be developed with these tools seem to be the kind that proliferated to the point of annoyance in Ubuntu, which is why I run Debian now.
Well, that and all the bugs, and bugs worked-around rather than fixed…
I give up.
I’d give some half-hearted apology, but that would be insincere. It seems you’re truly willfully ignorant of what’s already out there and what’s possible with them.
“fresh product”
“fresh” != better
software is not a “product” unless you’re selling it. Even then, it’s marketing that makes it a product, rather than a tool.
If you’re trying to market a ‘new’ idea, you’re either out for money or fame.
If you’re trying to make software easier to develop, there are better ways, but you don’t actually want that.
Christ, you didn’t even bother reading Emacs’ Wikipedia entry…
I have used emacs before but I used it in terminal so sue me. I say product because everything needs to be marketed as such. I use words like that because I understand the importance of targeting the right people. To answer your attempt at a question no I dont want to make money out of it and fame who gets famous for writing a tool to help people develop? (It would have to a a bloody awesome tool for that)
I understand what you mean about heavy IDEs. I normally work a lot in gvim, but when I did heavy Java work gave up gvim for a time. I found myself working much more effectively when using a “heavy” IDE for smart source editing, and the command line for everything else.
But since you mentioned Eclipse… have you tried Eclipse + pydev recently?
I think the main problem with Eclipse isn’t that it’s heavy. (I haven’t seen a good IDE in 10 years that wasn’t in some way heavy, the last one I used that didn’t feel heavy was made by Borland and ran on DOS) Eclipse, however has a learning curve. (For example: what exactly are these “perspective” things and how do I get my brain around using them, and if I screw one of them up how do I fix it?) I think Eclipse is fairly customizable, so you could probably make it look “less heavy” if you spend some time tweaking it.
Eclipse’s learning curve comes both in its setup time: first, how do you actually get pydev installed? it’s not in the repos, and using Eclipse’s third-party software updater doesn’t always seem to work well – see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/eclipse/+bug/530414 for example. Second, if you manage to get it installed, how do you get a project and workspace set up? (not too difficult for most who have used a similar IDE, but still takes time to figure out.)
Anyway, back to pydev. I managed to get it installed on Lucid yesterday and was experimenting with it a bit. I was impressed; it’s come a long way since the last time I checked it out. I especially liked the refactoring support it has:
http://pydev.org/manual_adv_refactoring.html
Looks like it could really speed up some formerly-tedious tasks.
After a quick wget/grep of the pydev source, it’s ~400,000 lines of Java and Python source:
/tmp/pydev$ wc -l $(find . | grep \.py$) | tail -n 1
100706 total
/tmp/pydev$ wc -l $(find . | grep \.java$) | tail -n 1
294170 total
… the point being that writing a good IDE with python support is a non-trivial work of engineering. I’d rather spend time trying to get Eclipse to work more smoothly with Ubuntu than working on an alternate IDE.
I have tried out eclipse on and off for 2 years and ive never liked it. Its interface is completely dated and filled with crap.
maybe you start reading some manuals about eclipse if you dont understand it? It certainly is more complex then gedit…
I have used eclipse a lot for java development in college so I know my way around. No need for looking at manuals or the like. I just think its heavy.
I came to a point like this a while ago, but i don’t have time to make my own text-editor. But if you can do it, this will be amazing, and if you need help, i can work with you on this project.
Other Solutions
Aptana Studio – Eclipse base IDE, for web development, and easy to install plugins.
PyCharm – It’s very annoying to install it, but everyone is saying it an amazing IDE, btw it give 42days trial only.
Scribes – very simple text editor made by python text-editor
Id love all the help I could get
i wouldnt mind something which could create easy hookups to glade files.
gedit does most of what you want.
But its not programming focused and thats what I want. It has the basic python syntax highlighted but not much else. The spell checker checks the entire text too witch can be annoying because it sees x=2 as a mistake.
This is awesome. I have wanted a specialist python-(Gnome) IDE for a long time. I might chip in after a couple of months.
Best of Luck.
Have you tried Komodo Edit, it’s open source and cross platform, based on mozilla XUL runner and mostly written in python (i believe) and developed by ActiveState.
It’s not a full featured IDE, but it does most of what you are looking for and can be extended using third party extensions much like firefox (i think python can be used to write extension as well) .
I’ve been using it for a while (used gedit before) mostly for python but also some javascript development and i like it alot. I does crash once in a while, but not as much with recent releases.
You can get it here: http://www.activestate.com/komodo_edit/
Developer site: http://www.openkomodo.com/
I have heard of it and it just uses the base language auto completion for python not GTK or Qt which id love to have.
Komodo uses an introspection tool to generate auto completion catalogs, so in theory you could generate gtk and qt catalogs and use that.
Google for “komodo pygtk” for some more insight.
Sounds like a good idea!
In light of the many alternatives “heavy”(Wing IDE, Eclipse) and “light”(emacs, vim) i always thought that something “medium” would be nice.
A slimmed down(#6) version of the heavies or a lightweight IDE with a easily usable GUI was what I had in mind.
Is this what you had in mind too? please tell us more!
It really makes no sense to develop yet another editor from scratch. Take an existing one, and extend it. From your points, gedit already has everything except 5, and you can extend gedit in almost any way you want…
I hate extention systems its a lot easier just to make a new one from scratch that does what I want.
…
I… don’t think you understand what an ‘extension system’ means.
Re-writing everything instead of using what’s there is outright silly.
I’d hoped you were just uninformed, but it’s starting to look like willful ignorance. Please prove me wrong….
“…its a lot easier just to make a new one from scratch…” …no, it’s not.
Well, only if you’re willing to learn how the “extension system” works.
Emacs is written in Emacs Lisp(for the most part). You can (basically) re-write the editor in the config f file.
That would be silly, but my point is that you’re not limited in how far you can take Emacs. vimscript is apparently less flexible, but yeah.
It’s starting to look like you’re either looking for a project to do, and justifying your basic desire to write it, or you’re just unwilling to believe that shaping something that already exists could be better than re-inventing the wheel.
I get what your saying but I wouldnt be suggesting reinventing the wheel if I didnt think it was necessary. I dont need an extra project to do im busy enough doing some stuff for Quickly.
I gave a more detailed reply to your comment above.
I don’t see the point to develop a new editor. I think it’s a rough task to develop an complete and useable editor. So It would be better to extend an existing one, isn’t it?
What do you think about: http://editra.org/
That only has syntax highlighting from what I gather.
I really see no reason to develop yet another text editor. From the points you listed, only #5 gedit doesn’t have, and you can implement that very easily with plugins (which you can write in python). Instead of investing a lot of time, creating a mediocre and specific IDE, you can just focus on what is important if you use an existing editor.
I mentioned it, I hate tapping into already flooded plugin crap. Gedit doesnt do everything that I want it to.
Yeah, you’re really, really misinformed.
A programmer wiser than I once said: “If you can only understand your own code, no one else can understand your code, either.”
Which would make your project futile.
Yeah, I’m starting to get actually annoyed, but I am trying to be somewhat helpful.
I’m using vim for most of the time. And some times WING IDE http://wingware.com/ (it has 30-day trial)
Looks nice I might give it a look but still id love the quickly integration too.
sounds like you want http://pydev.org/ for eclipse. And yes I also would like a tighter integration of eclipse in ubuntu as it supports also almost any other language. (C++, Latex) and Fedora has great integration.
I mentioned pydev at the start of my post and eclipse just feels really heavy to me. I want something a lot simplier.
hello
- gedit
- geany
no need to write yet-another-one-(unused,unuseful)-ide
I use gedit at the moment and it just has syntax highlighting and geany is ok but the UI is very ugly.
I have to say that you can get most of what you want from vim. The completion isn’t perfect, but between ropevim and python stdlib completion with omni complete it’s been enough for me.
I recently redid my vim config for python development at a new job and it’s pretty well commented.
http://github.com/mitechie/pyvim
Links and notes on all of the below are in my .vimrc config file
- Syntax highlighting
Well that’s no problem. There’s also extra definitions for highlighting things like .mako files and such available.
- Inserting of snippets
Snipmate is awesome for snippets of code. The pita is that for using Jono’s project of snippets you’d have to script a converter or something to get it into your Snipmate library.
- Intellisense (a la Visual studio) with the main Python syntax and the main linux desktop stuff like gtk, glade and Qt
So as I mentioned. Between ropevim (which is python specific and really good) and omnicomplete I can auto complete most things pretty easily at their original definition.
i.e.
from xxx import yyy
yyy.
t = yyy.zzz()
t.
- Spell check for comments and strings in the code
Vim no problem, spell check works
- To use quickly’s features in the main UI of the editor from the start of a project to release
I’ve not used quickly so can’t say much here
- Sheer simplicity
Well end of the day vim/gvim is pretty simple. I guess you can make it as easy/hard as you want with learning all the tricks. Worth the time, but not 100% require out of the gate.
More bookmarks and tons of info
http://delicious.com/deuce868/vim
I dont like vim or emacs, I never have. Im one of those new wave people who dont use command line editors.
That’s why they invented gvim
I’ve used all the big IDE editors out there, komodo, wingide, pydev, gedit (although I’d hardly call it an IDE). Even paid for the full versions of them. End of the day, giving them up and learning to use gvim was one of the best productivity moves I’ve ever made on working with computers.
After that let’s talk window managers lol
stumpwm, here.
I’m assuming Awesome or Xmonad there?
Hah! Awesome, but have an itch to give Xmonad another shot one day. Looks like it’s improved a lot since I tried it before Awesome.
I would go with gedit as well, if it could get some sort of plugin profile manager so the average user wouldn’t get the developing plugins enabled by default; something like: gedit –plugin-profile develop-python
I’ve never done gedit plugin development, but I’m guessing the profile management could be done as a plugin as well?
I suggest giving Stani’s python editor a spin. It has a few quirks which annoy me to the point of not using it, but if you can live with those it’s great. I currently use gedit too. I tried emacs for a few months but somehow it was always slower to code with it than with gedit.
I like http://www.geany.org/
Brilliant!
I say go for it! If you can make something that is easy fro someone who doesn’t know python very well to get up and running in a way that allows them to explore and grow, that would be the top cherry of the whole big banana pie.
The most exciting thing for me when I started programming was that I could throw down some controls, double click to link some code and have a GRAPHICAL program do what I wanted was the best feeling.
(I wrote IDE’s for assembler programs in DELPHI, don’t laugh:)
Hooking more people with sweet sweet instant gratification programming candy is a great way to bring more people to Open Source.
PS: Please don’t make it look like every other IDE out there with a big text box with some buttons at the top and output at the bottom. Pleeeeese
Well it would be a challenge to do it without a textbox and buttons
Since you don’t like netbeans python support, either fix it or write a new plugin. I’m not huge fan of netbeans, but reinventing the wheel is not a good use of your time. It has built-in hooks for code completion, refactoring and debugging that would take you years to implement. Leverage existing codebases instead of starting from scratch.
It wouldnt take years to do what I want in an IDE at a base level. The way I imagine doing this is in a way to streamline development of simple apps.
Quickly already exists.
So… use that.
I know about Quickly im a contributor to it.
That explains alot.
So does your grammar.
This comment is for TheGZeus but there is no reply button to add it.
You do know a lot is 2 words right? So stop being a freaking grammar nazi when you can’t even spell right either.
Not very constructive arguments against reusing something that already exists (one being hate and the other calling something crap). I will never understand why people want to reinvent the wheel all the time. Oh, and recent gedit spellchecker is smart about content, and only checks strings/comments etc.
Of course in the end you can do whatever you want
But at least give some better arguments why you write something like this from scratch.
Doesnt mean I cant reuse the code that someone else writes. I just want a focused IDE for python development.
Ah, the GNOME philosophy: “Features are confusing, remove the ones you personally don’t want. If other people want more, they can go elsewhere.
If a program exists, but is slightly different from your ideal, write it again in another language, rather than learn the language it’s written in and submit a patch.”
Again, you don’t need to use features that you don’t want. What you want is already out there, but you seem to be dead-set on writing an application that does _less_ for purpose of having a program that does _less, and no more.
Features are not the enemy.
I know they are not but as I said above in reply to you im not happy with the current IDEs there is no one IDE that does everything I want right. I want a focused simple IDE. I know there are others but not one are aimed at the developers we want to get in the future. Apple has xcode and Microsoft has Visual Studio why cant we have something similar for the opportunistic developer of Ubuntu.
Buzzwords.
Yay.
SOOOO glad I left Ubuntu.
Buzz words are fine by me.
I don’t like eclipse either. Have you ever used TextMate? It’s my favorite editor when I’m on the mac, and it definetly goes with your need of “sheer simplicity.” I personally would love to have the equivalent on linux, just just like windows has e-text editor which is compatible with TextMate’s bundles and works basically the same…you would gain a ton of functionality just by supporting TextMate’s bundles.
TextMate has great support for python and django, I miss that on linux.
Good luck and keep us posted on your success.
Ive never owned a Mac so no to TextMate but ill look it up and see what features I can implement. I more than likely wont start developing till after the college year ends but ill post very regularly about it and get as many people on board as I can
While you’re at it, include Quickly (for easy packaging) and Ground Control integration. You could be the hero that Ubuntu needs.
Thanks ill look into it all when I start developing.
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Then look at the e text editor. As I said, it’s the equivalent of TextMate. Simple, fast, powerful.