[ruby-talk:28014] Re: Ruby IDE?? What about using Eclipse??

> Could someone who've tried Eclipse describe these more advanced
> features. How do they work and are they any good? They sound cool but from
> previous experience with CASE-tools/IDE's my impression is that they can
> be hard to understand and use and doesn't really help me be more
> productive.

A good software development tool should not get in the way. It should
facilitate software development by providing information and/or assistance
only when you need it while requiring only a minimal amount of effort (or no
effort) on the programmer's part. Now that's very easy to say, but actually
accomplishing that is another store entirely. Still, its a good principle to
keep in mind (like matz's principle of least surprise).

Eclipse doesn't directly support or implement most these features. Instead,
it provides a framework in which these features can be implemented (Eclipse
is distributed with plug-ins for that implement many of these features for
Java). In addition, the design of Eclipse allows plug-ins to be tightly
integrated while being independent. So, a Ruby plug-in for Eclipse can still
make full use of the CVS plug-in or the Ant plug-in.

Here are a few of my thoughts on some of these facilities (let's take the
really simple stuff, like syntax highlighting and auto-indenting, for
granted):

** Code Assist Features **

- Code Completion: As you type in program code, a realtime analysis is
maintained of what you might be trying to write and offers you (either
automatically or on request) a list of possible completions. The key to
making this work effectively (besides the quality of the analysis) is making
it unobtrusive and nearly effortless to use. For Java, IntelliJ IDEA and
JBuilder 5 both have excellent implementations that can serve as a model.

- Smart Renaming: When any entity is renamed (module, class, method,
variable) the IDE should be able to rename all uses of that entity in the
project's source code (this should really be under the heading of
Refactoring). A variation on renaming, is moving code -- like moving a
method from one class to another.

- Smart Help: When the name of something( module, class, method, variable)
is selected -- or even if the cursor is merely within the name -- a simple
action (like a keystroke) should be able to quickly display whatever
information is available. This could be a method signature or the contents
of embedded documentation for that name. Admittedly, this will be more
difficult in a dynamic language like Ruby than it is in typed languages like
Java.

- Template Expansion: This is the ability to define your own templates for
commonly inserted code. This can apply at any level, like inserting the
boilerplate text for a new module or class or the text for iterating over an
array. These templates should accept parameters which can be substituted
within the expanded template one or more times. The typical way of invoking
this is to type in your code the name of the template (like "class") and
then press the template-expansion-keystroke.

- xUnit Support: I'm not sure what form this would take, but whatever
testing framework becomes the Ruby standard, the IDE should facilitate its
use.

** Class Browser **

The first purpose of a class browser (or a structural view) is to let you
see the structure the modules/classes in your project. The second purpose is
to use that structure to let you jump to the source code that implements a
particular item in the in the hierarchy. A variation on this would let you,
in the source code you are editing, select a module/class/method/etc. and
then jump to its definition (or see a list of all known uses which you can
also use to jump to those locations in the source code).

================

Regards,
Curt