The Descent plugin for Eclipse provides an IDE for writing, launching and debugging code in D.

Explanations on how to get it from within Eclipse are here:

http://www.dsource.org/projects/descent

(There's no need to do the nightly-build manual stuff for this. If you previously had a nightly-build, you must need to remove it before updating. Anyway, the current nightly-build reflects this release, so you can just do it manually if it turns out easier for you.)

This release is just an accumulation of small features and bug fixes since the last (official, not nightly-build) version. But since I don't want everyone to think "Aww, nothing new, just a new number", this release also includes support for array "extension methods" in autocompletion. For this to work, the function that you want to use as an extension must be in the current module, or already imported (so for example you won't get methods from std.algorithm, tango.core.Array or tango.text.Util until you have an import for them in the module you are currently typing in).

Here's a video that shows this functionality: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBj0wu9dbnA

And a question: what would you like to see next in Descent?

Any suggestion, critic or bug report is welcome. You can use:
- the forums: http://www.dsource.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=107
- trac: http://www.dsource.org/projects/descent/report?action=new
- irc: at freenode, #d.descent

Enjoy!

== Quote from Ary Borenszweig (ary@esperanto.org.ar)'s article
> The Descent plugin for Eclipse provides an IDE for writing, launching
> and debugging code in D.
> Explanations on how to get it from within Eclipse are here:
> http://www.dsource.org/projects/descent
> (There's no need to do the nightly-build manual stuff for this. If you
> previously had a nightly-build, you must need to remove it before
> updating. Anyway, the current nightly-build reflects this release, so
> you can just do it manually if it turns out easier for you.)
> This release is just an accumulation of small features and bug fixes
> since the last (official, not nightly-build) version. But since I don't
> want everyone to think "Aww, nothing new, just a new number", this
> release also includes support for array "extension methods" in
> autocompletion. For this to work, the function that you want to use as
> an extension must be in the current module, or already imported (so for
> example you won't get methods from std.algorithm, tango.core.Array or
> tango.text.Util until you have an import for them in the module you are
> currently typing in).
> Here's a video that shows this functionality:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBj0wu9dbnA
> And a question: what would you like to see next in Descent?
> Any suggestion, critic or bug report is welcome. You can use:
> - the forums: http://www.dsource.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=107
> - trac: http://www.dsource.org/projects/descent/report?action=new
> - irc: at freenode, #d.descent
> Enjoy!

Awesome!  How far along is semantic support for D2?  I'd really like a real IDE
for D2, but I guess not having one is the price I pay for living on the bleeding edge.

I dont think the allround ide is a problem anymore with eclipse available. Whats missing is a good gui builder. If you know of one other than entice though can you please reply with the links.

On Sun, 21 Dec 2008 18:50:31 +1300, dsimcha <dsimcha@yahoo.com> wrote:

> == Quote from Ary Borenszweig (ary@esperanto.org.ar)'s article
>> The Descent plugin for Eclipse provides an IDE for writing, launching
>> and debugging code in D.
>> Explanations on how to get it from within Eclipse are here:
>> http://www.dsource.org/projects/descent
>> (There's no need to do the nightly-build manual stuff for this. If you
>> previously had a nightly-build, you must need to remove it before
>> updating. Anyway, the current nightly-build reflects this release, so
>> you can just do it manually if it turns out easier for you.)
>> This release is just an accumulation of small features and bug fixes
>> since the last (official, not nightly-build) version. But since I don't
>> want everyone to think "Aww, nothing new, just a new number", this
>> release also includes support for array "extension methods" in
>> autocompletion. For this to work, the function that you want to use as
>> an extension must be in the current module, or already imported (so for
>> example you won't get methods from std.algorithm, tango.core.Array or
>> tango.text.Util until you have an import for them in the module you are
>> currently typing in).
>> Here's a video that shows this functionality:
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBj0wu9dbnA
>> And a question: what would you like to see next in Descent?
>> Any suggestion, critic or bug report is welcome. You can use:
>> - the forums: http://www.dsource.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=107
>> - trac: http://www.dsource.org/projects/descent/report?action=new
>> - irc: at freenode, #d.descent
>> Enjoy!
>
> Awesome!  How far along is semantic support for D2?  I'd really like a real IDE
> for D2, but I guess not having one is the price I pay for living on the bleeding edge.

Reply to Ary,

> And a question: what would you like to see next in Descent?
> 

Better template support. I now have 2 libs that are just flat uneditable under descent (scrapple.units and scrapple.dparse) both bring it down to a stand still if not crash and hand it out right. I'd love to see it just work at all for those files even if it doesn't support any template specific goodies.

Thank you so much, I really appreciate this IDE.

What would make me most happy, personally, is getting Descent to parse command line output from dmd and jump to errors in the source file.

Next up the wishlist is actually building from Descent, but this is less important. Dsss support would be awesome too.

Tim M wrote:
> I dont think the allround ide is a problem anymore with eclipse available. Whats missing is a good gui builder. If you know of one other than entice though can you please reply with the links.

No top-posting, please.

I use Glade. It works reasonably well for small projects.

BCS wrote:
> Reply to Ary,
> 
>> And a question: what would you like to see next in Descent?
>>
> 
> Better template support. I now have 2 libs that are just flat uneditable under descent (scrapple.units and scrapple.dparse) both bring it down to a stand still if not crash and hand it out right. I'd love to see it just work at all for those files even if it doesn't support any template specific goodies.

I agree entirely. Using templates turns Descent into a very large text editor. I still use Descent for any application or library level development. (When I use D as a scripting language, I still use vim.)

On Tue, 23 Dec 2008 04:54:11 +0300, Christopher Wright <dhasenan@gmail.com> wrote:

> Tim M wrote:
>> I dont think the allround ide is a problem anymore with eclipse available. Whats missing is a good gui builder. If you know of one other than entice though can you please reply with the links.
>
> No top-posting, please.
>

What do you mean? His post is not a top-level message.

> I use Glade. It works reasonably well for small projects.

On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 9:01 PM, Denis Koroskin <2korden@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Dec 2008 04:54:11 +0300, Christopher Wright <dhasenan@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Tim M wrote:
>>>
>>> I dont think the allround ide is a problem anymore with eclipse available. Whats missing is a good gui builder. If you know of one other than entice though can you please reply with the links.
>>
>> No top-posting, please.
>>
>
> What do you mean? His post is not a top-level message.

Top-posting is putting your reply at the top, with the quoted post below it.

Ary Borenszweig wrote:
> The Descent plugin for Eclipse provides an IDE for writing, launching and debugging code in D.
> 
> Explanations on how to get it from within Eclipse are here:
> 
> http://www.dsource.org/projects/descent
> 
> (There's no need to do the nightly-build manual stuff for this. If you previously had a nightly-build, you must need to remove it before updating. Anyway, the current nightly-build reflects this release, so you can just do it manually if it turns out easier for you.)
> 
> This release is just an accumulation of small features and bug fixes since the last (official, not nightly-build) version. But since I don't want everyone to think "Aww, nothing new, just a new number", this release also includes support for array "extension methods" in autocompletion. For this to work, the function that you want to use as an extension must be in the current module, or already imported (so for example you won't get methods from std.algorithm, tango.core.Array or tango.text.Util until you have an import for them in the module you are currently typing in).
> 
> Here's a video that shows this functionality: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBj0wu9dbnA
> 
> And a question: what would you like to see next in Descent?
> 
> Any suggestion, critic or bug report is welcome. You can use:
> - the forums: http://www.dsource.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=107
> - trac: http://www.dsource.org/projects/descent/report?action=new
> - irc: at freenode, #d.descent
> 
> Enjoy!

First I have to say that you're doing a great job with descent. Here are a few suggestions:

Remove "." as insertion of autocompletion. Yes I know that it's like that in JDT, BUT Java doesn't have slicing ".." and variadic functions "..."


Add an option, when enabled, if you're in a slice [|] and pressing "." don't show the autocompletion list (| is cursor). Ctrl+Space is still available.


"Go to definition" using Ctrl+click doesn't work in Eclipse 3.4 and newer, ticket #106


Add "Libraries" for project properties, including "User Library". See JDT, right click on project -> Properties -> Java Build Path -> Libraries -> Add Library ... -> User Library. This is a must after removing "Installed Compilers" in one of the latest nightly builds.


If not too much work, getting Descent to parse command line output from dmd/gdc/ldc and jump to errors in the source file.


Not so important, creation of dsss.conf file in project


It would be really great if the semantic analyzer could get better performance, it works great in files with around 200-300 lines of code. If the files are larger than that it can get really slow.


For some reason, I haven't found out yet, many features like "go to definition", highlighting class fields in blue, highlight same occurrences of variable and so on stops working in larger files, it's probably something specific in the code that makes it not working. For example in this file, http://www.dsource.org/projects/dwt-mac/browser/dwt/widgets/Display.d , everything works as it should until line 766, after that line none of the above mentioned features work.




The semantic analyzer highlights this piece of code as an error:

System.arraycopy (contexts, 0, newContexts, 0, contexts.length);

Error message: Function expected before (), not 'arraycopy'
File: http://www.dsource.org/projects/dwt-mac/browser/dwt/widgets/Display.d
Line: 397
Included from file: http://www.dsource.org/projects/dwt-mac/browser/dwt/dwthelper/System.d
Line: 126



Pleas let me know if I should make a ticket for any of these suggestions, problems