It's been some time since I last posted to this newsgroup, I've been quite busy these past weeks!

Among other things, I started writing an IDE for D from scratch and opened a SourceForge project for it a few minutes ago, I'll also open a dsource project to link to the sf one in the following days.

At first I tried to code it in D using wxD but soon found out the limitations of these bindings, then I tried to write my own wxWidgets bindings which worked great until i realized I was leaking memory like hell and had a hard time linking garbage collected D objects to C++ reference counted objects without adding complex overhead.

So after spending two weeks on these failed attempts, I jumped back into C++ after two years of almost only writing D code, this time using boost, and boy is that library sweet!

Here is the (very simple) website of the project, with a screenshot of the program so far, the content is hard coded for now to test the custom editor painting routines.

http://codepoet.sourceforge.net


Jeremie

Jeremie Pelletier wrote:
> It's been some time since I last posted to this newsgroup, I've been quite busy these past weeks!
> 
> Among other things, I started writing an IDE for D from scratch and opened a SourceForge project for it a few minutes ago, I'll also open a dsource project to link to the sf one in the following days.
> 
[snip]

Jeremie

On 12 Oct 2009 you wrote:

"Eclipse is heavy, slow and often unresponsive. I use poseidon myself because it is light and fast and I don't require much more from an IDE at the moment."

Would you like to enlighten us as to why you have decided to write your own IDE & debugger, and give up Poseidon.

cheers
Nick B

Nick B wrote:
> Jeremie Pelletier wrote:
>> It's been some time since I last posted to this newsgroup, I've been quite busy these past weeks!
>>
>> Among other things, I started writing an IDE for D from scratch and opened a SourceForge project for it a few minutes ago, I'll also open a dsource project to link to the sf one in the following days.
>>
> [snip]
> 
> Jeremie
> 
> On 12 Oct 2009 you wrote:
> 
> "Eclipse is heavy, slow and often unresponsive. I use poseidon myself because it is light and fast and I don't require much more from an IDE at the moment."
> 
> Would you like to enlighten us as to why you have decided to write your own IDE & debugger, and give up Poseidon.
> 
> cheers
> Nick B

Sure, I really like Poseidon, but I got to the limit of its features and  then it crashed one time too many on me (good thing I ctrl+S even few keystrokes) :x

I've been using poseidon for over a year and a half now, and it has been great, only having a project manager and syntax highlighter and nothing else to depend on is a great way to learn about a language because it forces you to memorize everything.

Many reasons lead me to decide to write my own IDE, its a project that I've been considering for quite some time now as a stepping stone to other long term ideas I have which would require such an IDE.

I considered trying to pick up the poseidon sources and extending it, but porting it to DMD2 sounded like too much work. Working with the existing source implied using old versions of dwt and tango, two libraries I have no experience with.

For one, I recently got addicted to the split window feature of VisualStudio and I found out that wxAUI implements it out of the box and in a better way than VS. You can drag and drop tabs to create new groups, and you're not limited to only one direction at a time.

Intellisense was also another motivation, while its not needed to write code, its sure helps speed up the process, especially with those function parameter tooltips and autocompletion for the longer identifier names.

Furthermore, Poseidon will only works with D code and only compile with dmd. I wanted to be able to use multiple languages and compilers side by side in the same project.

As for debugging, poseidon's support for ddbg is great, but not nearly as powerful and practical as the debugging features of visual studio.

Jumping back in C++ was refreshing, I now make very little use of macros, feel much more comfortable with templates and generic programming, basically I write C++ as if I was writing D, and it only makes me love the little conveniences of D even more.

The IDE will also be cross-platform, I'm using wxWidgets for all the user interface and boost for everything else.

Some things I have in mind for later in the development cycle are tasks, semantic analysis, version control for projects, automake and autoconf integration on unix, etc...


Jeremie

Jeremie Pelletier wrote:
> Nick B wrote:
>> Jeremie Pelletier wrote:
>>> It's been some time since I last posted to this newsgroup, I've been quite busy these past weeks!
>>>
>>> Among other things, I started writing an IDE for D from scratch and opened a SourceForge project for it a few minutes ago, I'll also open a dsource project to link to the sf one in the following days.
>>>
>> [snip]

> 
> The IDE will also be cross-platform, I'm using wxWidgets for all the user interface and boost for everything else.
> 
> Some things I have in mind for later in the development cycle are tasks, semantic analysis, version control for projects, automake and autoconf integration on unix, etc...
> 
> 
> Jeremie

Sounds really interesting.  When do you expect it to be ready for beta testing ?

Nick B

Jeremie Pelletier wrote:
> It's been some time since I last posted to this newsgroup, I've been quite busy these past weeks!
> 
> Among other things, I started writing an IDE for D from scratch and opened a SourceForge project for it a few minutes ago, I'll also open a dsource project to link to the sf one in the following days.
> 
> At first I tried to code it in D using wxD but soon found out the limitations of these bindings, then I tried to write my own wxWidgets bindings which worked great until i realized I was leaking memory like hell and had a hard time linking garbage collected D objects to C++ reference counted objects without adding complex overhead.
> 
> So after spending two weeks on these failed attempts, I jumped back into C++ after two years of almost only writing D code, this time using boost, and boy is that library sweet!
> 
> Here is the (very simple) website of the project, with a screenshot of the program so far, the content is hard coded for now to test the custom editor painting routines.
> 
> http://codepoet.sourceforge.net
> 
> 
> Jeremie


Though I don't use an IDE myself, I think this is great. It is often mentioned on the NG that one of the things keeping people away from D is  the fact that there are so few IDEs with good D support.

Are you strictly targeting Windows, or will this be available for other platforms as well?

-Lars

Jeremie Pelletier wrote:
> It's been some time since I last posted to this newsgroup, I've been quite busy these past weeks!
> 
> Among other things, I started writing an IDE for D from scratch and opened a SourceForge project for it a few minutes ago, I'll also open a dsource project to link to the sf one in the following days.
> 
> At first I tried to code it in D using wxD but soon found out the limitations of these bindings, then I tried to write my own wxWidgets bindings which worked great until i realized I was leaking memory like hell and had a hard time linking garbage collected D objects to C++ reference counted objects without adding complex overhead.
> 
> So after spending two weeks on these failed attempts, I jumped back into C++ after two years of almost only writing D code, this time using boost, and boy is that library sweet!

Oh dear, that's not good publicity for D...
I know the implementation language doesn't really matter, but it's just not good publicity.

> Here is the (very simple) website of the project, with a screenshot of the program so far, the content is hard coded for now to test the custom editor painting routines.
> 
> http://codepoet.sourceforge.net
> 
> 
> Jeremie

Jeremie Pelletier wrote:

> Among other things, I started writing an IDE for D from scratch and
> opened a SourceForge project for it a few minutes ago, I'll also open a
> dsource project to link to the sf one in the following days.
> 
> At first I tried to code it in D using wxD but soon found out the
> limitations of these bindings, then I tried to write my own wxWidgets
> bindings which worked great until i realized I was leaking memory like
> hell and had a hard time linking garbage collected D objects to C++
> reference counted objects without adding complex overhead.
...
> Jumping back in C++ was refreshing, I now make very little use of macros, feel much more comfortable with templates and generic programming, basically I write C++ as if I was writing D, and it only makes me love the little conveniences of D even more.
> 
> The IDE will also be cross-platform, I'm using wxWidgets for all the user interface and boost for everything else.

Sounds like a good approach for a new fresh DMD2 IDE, the oldskool stuff
with GDC and wxD and Code::Blocks is not very likely to make it there...

I think Walter writes DMD the same way (D in C++) and Andrei is a fan of
Boost, so I don't think you can go wrong there... Hope it gets released!

--anders

Lars T. Kyllingstad wrote:
> Jeremie Pelletier wrote:
>> It's been some time since I last posted to this newsgroup, I've been quite busy these past weeks!
>>
>> Among other things, I started writing an IDE for D from scratch and opened a SourceForge project for it a few minutes ago, I'll also open a dsource project to link to the sf one in the following days.
>>
>> At first I tried to code it in D using wxD but soon found out the limitations of these bindings, then I tried to write my own wxWidgets bindings which worked great until i realized I was leaking memory like hell and had a hard time linking garbage collected D objects to C++ reference counted objects without adding complex overhead.
>>
>> So after spending two weeks on these failed attempts, I jumped back into C++ after two years of almost only writing D code, this time using boost, and boy is that library sweet!
>>
>> Here is the (very simple) website of the project, with a screenshot of the program so far, the content is hard coded for now to test the custom editor painting routines.
>>
>> http://codepoet.sourceforge.net
>>
>>
>> Jeremie
> 
> 
> Though I don't use an IDE myself, I think this is great. It is often mentioned on the NG that one of the things keeping people away from D is  the fact that there are so few IDEs with good D support.
> 
> Are you strictly targeting Windows, or will this be available for other platforms as well?

Forget it, I see you've already answered this in another post. :)

-Lars

On Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:22:42 +0300, Jeremie Pelletier <jeremiep@gmail.com> wrote:

> It's been some time since I last posted to this newsgroup, I've been quite busy these past weeks!
>
> Among other things, I started writing an IDE for D from scratch and opened a SourceForge project for it a few minutes ago, I'll also open a dsource project to link to the sf one in the following days.
>
> At first I tried to code it in D using wxD but soon found out the limitations of these bindings, then I tried to write my own wxWidgets bindings which worked great until i realized I was leaking memory like hell

Try to integrate C++ DMD front-end into your IDE, and it will leak a lot more.

Denis Koroskin wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:22:42 +0300, Jeremie Pelletier <jeremiep@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> It's been some time since I last posted to this newsgroup, I've been quite busy these past weeks!
>>
>> Among other things, I started writing an IDE for D from scratch and opened a SourceForge project for it a few minutes ago, I'll also open a dsource project to link to the sf one in the following days.
>>
>> At first I tried to code it in D using wxD but soon found out the limitations of these bindings, then I tried to write my own wxWidgets bindings which worked great until i realized I was leaking memory like hell
> 
> Try to integrate C++ DMD front-end into your IDE, and it will leak a lot more.

If I detect any leaks with DMD I'll just make it use boost's shared_ptr, then bye bye leaks!

The debug runtime library that comes with visual studio already detects memory leaks and allows me to put breakpoints on them to see the call stack and local variable values of the leaked allocation.

Its pretty easy to keep memory leaks around none with that, even if C++ requires more careful programming than D does, more destructor work than D also.

Jeremie