What are the most important features of an IDE for Perl development? [closed]

Asked 18/8, 2009 at 5:14 Answered 18/8, 2009 at 5:15

As some of you might know I am the lead developer of Padre, The Perl IDE. In the first year of its development, Padre became an acceptable text editor with some extra features for Perl development.

I'd like to ask the Stack Overflow community for some help in driving the project further to turn it into an exceptional IDE for Perl development. So I'd be glad to read what do you think are the most important features of an IDE that are still missing from Padre?.

Especially I'd be interested in people who currently use Eclipse+EPIC, Komodo, Visual Studio, or any of the text editors for programmers.

Bezant answered 18/8, 2009 at 5:15 Comment(9)

I think you should also care about the opinion of those that use vim (yes, and also emacs (there, I said it)). These will be the hardest users to win over. – Pavilion 18/8, 2009 at 5:53

@Manni: as a Vim user, I can say that it's overwhelmingly unlikely that I could be won over. My guess is that many (most?) Vim and Emacs (there, I said it) users would feel the same. We know the difference between our preferred editor and a more "modern" IDE. We prefer ours. – Foreside 18/8, 2009 at 10:13

I am a vim user myself - or used to be - and I agree with Telemachus that I don't think the vim or emacs users will switch in large numbers. At least not until we implement the emacs and vim keybindings. In the meantime we encourage them to steal from Padre: code-and-hacks.blogspot.com/2009/07/… – Eydie 18/8, 2009 at 12:21

@Szabgab: you say that a bit like a recovering alcoholic. :) – Foreside 18/8, 2009 at 15:29

It's not easy for vi/emacs users to make the switch until someone with a modern IDE/Debugger shows them what they're missing. When I show people PHPEd for PHP or Eclipse with PDT or Eclipse with EPIC, they are usually very impressed. A lot of them are influenced enough to switch. – Cassiterite 18/8, 2009 at 15:41

I don't really buy that, Artem. I currently seem to be moving in the opposite direction, from Eclipse to (g)vim. – Pavilion 18/8, 2009 at 19:23

But however cool vim and emacs may be, I think the Padre folks should try and get those people to change to Padre. Why not at least try? – Pavilion 18/8, 2009 at 19:24

@Artem Russakovskii what do you think are the features of those IDEs that make the vim/emacs users so impressed? Do they really switch or are they just impressed? – Eydie 19/8, 2009 at 6:29

Vim user here. I've not used Vim for more than a few months and I don't know if I could go back to the world of IDEs.. – Thuja 20/8, 2009 at 9:16

The most important feature of an IDE for Perl development (including Padre) is:

an interactive debugger that actually works. E.g. remembering breakpoints, ability to drill down into complicated data structures, and copy (to clipboard) should work on watched variables - including a menu command Copy Special that allows putting it in various formats; say CSV, XML or tab-separated.

Vannavannatta answered 18/8, 2009 at 5:15 Comment(0)

The two most invaluable features I find:

line-by-line debugging, watchpoints, breakpoints, and so on, so I can properly debug my code.
code completion so I don't have to go looking up docs (even online).

Distraint answered 18/8, 2009 at 5:15 Comment(0)

OK, here's my third answer, although I hate to say it.

The competition is pretty easy to install. Padre isn't. I tried to update to the latest release today and, once again, got failing tests.

Pavilion answered 18/8, 2009 at 5:15 Comment(3)

We know we need simple installer, we already have it on Windows and one day we will have it on Linux and MacOSX as well. We just need some help with that. In the meantime: What tests are failing? Those of Padre or some prereq? On what OS? Have you reported the failing tests? – Eydie 19/8, 2009 at 6:35

Don't worry. I know you folks are working on this and I was going to give your ticket system a go today. But since you asked what features I am looking for in a Perl IDE, I (hesitantly) answered. – Pavilion 19/8, 2009 at 7:59

For the public record: the bug was fixed a couple of minutes before I tried to report it. – Pavilion 19/8, 2009 at 11:26

I am a heavy Perl EPIC user and my biggest gripe is not being able to jump to a function that is clearly defined in the current context (usually by pressing F3). It is pretty much hit or miss at this point.

Vannavannatta answered 18/8, 2009 at 5:15 Comment(1)

+1 Padre wouldn't need to implement this from scratch, either. It could use ctags. – Atropos 18/8, 2009 at 17:13

I work with Komodo. I also use other editors but I come back to Komodo most of the time. A good IDE shoud have:

A good Debugger. Breakpoints, watch lists, everything you need.
Remote debugging. Threads debugging capability.
Syntax highlighting including weighted fonts as well ( I was pretty disappointed by Oxygen, for example, an XSLT IDE, where I can not use bold fonts to emphasize reserved terms)
Syntax completion.
Project management tools, preferable extendable by plugins.

Breastbone answered 18/8, 2009 at 5:15 Comment(0)

Stability. People turn away quickly if their editor crashes and they lose their work.

Dewees answered 18/8, 2009 at 5:15 Comment(0)

Testing integration.

Perl has great unit testing tools. When I run my test suite and get a failure, I want to see the code for the test that failed.

Having a good way to jump through test results and see the code for the failed test along with the expected and actual results would be a great boon.

Polytonality answered 18/8, 2009 at 5:15 Comment(0)

A project manager. It's essential for me to be able to define the set of files and folders that comprise a particular codebase. Sessions are useful but not a replacement.

Atropos answered 18/8, 2009 at 5:15 Comment(5)

Agreed! And a decent project manager shouldn't even be too hard to implement. Besides, the competition is pretty weak. Komodo IDE's project are mind-boggling, counter intuitive and the feature clashes with their own VCS integration. EPIC/Eclipse don't have anything like that that I'm aware of. – Pavilion 18/8, 2009 at 19:28

EPIC/Eclipse has projects (or at least something called "project"). I remember because the last time I tried it syntax highlighting didn't work unless a file was in a project, which irritated me to no end. – Atropos 18/8, 2009 at 21:47

Padre has a (partially implemented) but automatic project management. Any directory structure that looks like a CPAN module is treated as a project without any manual configuration. Meaning any directory where there is a Makefile.PL or Build.PL is considered the root of the project. What would you like to see as project management? – Eydie 19/8, 2009 at 6:19

@Michael: Duh! You're right. I used to use the projects as some sort of file browser. The requirement that everything must be in some sort of project and that projects don't like it when the live outside of your workspace is, err...., suboptimal. – Pavilion 19/8, 2009 at 11:28

@szabgab: The essential functionality is to be able to define a set of files, directories (which implicitly includes their contents, possibly with filtering), and logical groupings (virtual folders which can contain files and directories). There should be a tree view for browsing and opening the files in the project and a mechanism for switching between projects. Having a root directory is useful (particularly if you relocate the data) but files shouldn't have to be under the root to be in the project. Anything else is gravy: e.g. building, running the test suite, or creating the distribution. – Atropos 19/8, 2009 at 13:27

Good VCS integration. This is something that I absolutely love in Eclipse: You instantly see what files have local changes and which aren't added to the repository yet. And you get to browse the different versions and have a nice diff view just one mouse click away.

Pavilion answered 18/8, 2009 at 5:15 Comment(0)

The first thing I look for is some kind of overview of the currently active file. I'd like to see methods/functions and, if possible, the used modules and especially any use base statements.

You solved that pretty well in Padre.

Pavilion answered 18/8, 2009 at 5:15 Comment(0)

The question seems more debatable than answerable. Risking myself of being accused copyright abuser, I will post contents that I remember from the book "Interactive programming environments" by David R. Barstow, Howard E. Shrobe, Erik Sandewall.

It will not be exactly the same, as I have read the book many years ago and I've jotted down it in another language.

PRINCIPLES OF A GOOD INTERACTIVE PROGRAMMING ENVIRONMENT

1: Know the user
    + Know the previous knowledge and practice of the user
    
2: Minimize the memorization
    + Selection and not characters entering
    + Names and not numbers
    + Predictable behavior: the user should have a previous impression of what the system will do
    + Possible access and changing of the parameters of the system      

3: Optimization of operations
    + Fast execution of common operations
    + Inertia of visualization: the screen should change the less possible
    + Memorization of system operation in user's memory
    + The meaning of specific operations should have a simple relationship with the state of the system
    + The system must be prepared to accept more than 10 followed commands per second, so that it can operate on the user's muscular memory
    + The system should be prepared to organize the parameters of a command

4: Engineer for the errors
    + Provide good error messages.
    + Engineer it to remove away the common errors.
    + The system should provide reversible actions.
    + Redundancy: the operations should have more than one way of being done.
    + Integrity of data structures.

Castorina answered 18/8, 2009 at 5:15 Comment(0)

Visual-Studio style refactoring for variables and function names and extraction of functions. Visual studio searches your whole module for all references and allows you to see all changed lines in case you do not want to change one instance (for whatever reason)...

Triplenerved answered 18/8, 2009 at 5:15 Comment(4)

As probably none of the current Padre developer have Visual Studio could you describe these refactoring tools in a bit more detail? Either here or an e-mail to me? ([email protected]) – Eydie 19/8, 2009 at 6:37

I think it is easiest if you download the free windows version from microsoft.com/express/product/default.aspx. I am personally using C#. Please let me know if you need some screenshots. – Triplenerved 19/8, 2009 at 9:16

OK - it is named Lexically Rename Variable - but I do not manage to get it working as in C# - I have sent you some screenshots anyway. – Triplenerved 19/8, 2009 at 10:1

thanks for the screenshots, I opened tickets padre.perlide.org/trac/ticket/492 padre.perlide.org/trac/ticket/494 but you have to explain what is not working for you in Lexically Rename Variable so we can either explain how it works or fix it. – Eydie 19/8, 2009 at 12:15

The ability to configure and run external (command-line) tools. Plug-ins are great but end-users won't necessarily want to author one just to integrate with an external tool. Allowing users to configure their own tools provides a great deal of extensibility with minimal barriers to entry.

My editor of choice is UltraEdit. It's not an IDE, but through its support for user tools, I've been able to integrate IDE features such as lint, version control, debugging, and more.

Atropos answered 18/8, 2009 at 5:15 Comment(0)

This can be possibly achieved via use strict; but could be as well a valuable feature even if not use'd explicitly, namely:

the other day we spent about 10-20 minutes debugging the following behavior:

my %hash;

$hash->{'key1'} = value1;

# on reading in a different module
print $hash{'key1'}; # is, of course, empty, but was so easy to overlook in the code above

resume: proper Perl type safety brought in by the IDE.

It might be already implemented in Padre, though, as it turned out not in Eclipse+EPIC

Sometime answered 18/8, 2009 at 5:15 Comment(2)

I think the correct solution here would be to tell the user he has to use strict with an appropriate reference to the car analogy. Something along the lines of not letting your child go without the belt on. Without that you cannot tell if the user really has both a %hash and a $hash. (though we could have special warnings for not using the same variable name for both scalars and hashes or arrays) – Eydie 18/8, 2009 at 13:43

Well, that certainly makes sense. The case that I described has happened in front of tired eyes of two rather experienced Perl-developers. Somehow it was very easy to forget the strict'ing and there you go. On the other hand -- the case demonstrates some more deep problems related to Perl itself, like weak type safety. So I thought these types of simple problems could be solved via the IDE (or a plugin for sanity checks). – Sometime 19/8, 2009 at 19:45

I use emacs. I would like a system that helps me refactor code, especially when I'm working on ugly 1999 code that uses the begin-at-the-beginning-go-to-the-end philosophy combined with duplicate-and-modify.

I looked at Eclipse, but I can't work with a system that requires me to create a project before I can make a one-character correction to a file.

I looked at Padre, but it's slow and crashes.

I looked at Kod which claims to be configured by CSS, but I can't find a man page that will tell me where to put the CSS.

Livelong answered 18/8, 2009 at 5:15 Comment(2)

I have not seen you reporting crashes in Padre on the Padre mailing list or IRC channel. – Eydie 25/2, 2011 at 6:17

I didn't stay with it long enough to figure out why it was failing. I see it installed new as part of CentOS on my laptop and it seems to work. I look forward to giving it a try. – Livelong 14/1, 2012 at 2:51

The ability to use my own choice of editor (which it may have, as far as I know). That has a chance of winning over the vim/emacs people.

Birthroot answered 18/8, 2009 at 5:15 Comment(0)

I don't know if Padre can do this, but the ability to split the screen is very important to me. As a VIM user, I constantly split my screen to look at another file while coding.

Rouvin answered 18/8, 2009 at 5:15 Comment(0)

Line ending policies for files, by directory, and project-wide.

So, for a given project or directory, I'd like to make all line endings be LF only. While in another directory I may wish to have a mix of CRLF and LF files.

I work a lot on stuff that goes back and forth between Unix and Win32 environments.

The typical solution of automatically converting all files back and forth as one moves from platform to platform hasn't worked well for me.

When a file gets created in the wrong format by accident, it can be a real pain.

Polytonality answered 18/8, 2009 at 5:15 Comment(0)

Ability to create and debug XS code.

Elizabetelizabeth answered 18/8, 2009 at 5:15 Comment(0)

Integration of a read-eval-print loop. As a heavy Emacs user, I very much appreciate Sepia. Very useful for trying things out before I commit them to code.

Philology answered 18/8, 2009 at 5:15 Comment(0)

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