From: Rich Kilmer <rich@...>
Date: 2001-12-09T03:33:21+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:27955] Re: Ruby IDE?? What about using Eclipse??



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Wilkes Joiner [mailto:boognish23@yahoo.com]
> Sent: Saturday, December 08, 2001 11:44 AM
> To: ruby-talk ML
> Subject: [ruby-talk:27946] Re: Ruby IDE?? What about using Eclipse??
> 
> [ . . . ]
>
> I waffle back and forth between eclipse and intellij
> for my java development.  intellij's editor is the
> best java editor i have ever used.  But being a VAJ
> fan, I must have decent class browsers.  It would be
> great to have that kind of support for ruby.
> 
> I am having a hard time envisioning the
> module/class/method browsers for ruby.  Does anyone
> have idea what these should/could look like?  I've
> always been a fan of the smalltalk browsers, but I
> think class definitions being scattered across
> multiple files brings up interesting challenges. 
> Maybe somthing totally file based would be the way to
> start out.  What do people really want in this
> department?
> 

I think the file approach would be best.  Robert Feldt is going to be releasing the Rulator (RubyInRuby) lexer/parser (based on Rockit) we can use it to build Abstract Syntax Trees from source files for doing exactly this.  Also, he is adding the ability to hold the comments contained within the source in the AST as well (instead of throwing them out).  So we can use the comments in the class browser :)  

One issue I have is the classes defined in extensions (.so files) would not be browsable with this approach.  The only way I can see doing this is loading extensions and walking the ObjectSpace (which is another approach to the class browser).  Maybe what would be cool is to have a class browser that first listed all the source files/extensions, then let you "walk into" them and extend your ObjectSpace (and defined classes, modules, etc).  A kind of dual-pane approach.

Thoughts?

-Rich