[ANN} Komodo 3.5.1 -- a professional Ruby IDE

[Wayne Vucenic]

Hey Christer,

Could you please explain slimeline and debugger quick mode ?

slimeline mode is for conserving screen real estate, especially on 1024x768
monitors. It has options to hide the tabs at the sides of the window, and
to hide various other UI elements, to give the maximum amount of space to
the main window. It's a nice idea, but personally I don't use it even on m=
y
1024x768 laptop because I really like seeing all the tools and other UI
elements.

The default debugger mode is quick mode, in which it doesn't have as much
information about stack frames other than the current one. I don't believe
this has any effect when you're debugging in the current stack frame. It
only makes a difference when you use the debugger to navigate to
previous stack frames (that is, the method that called the current method,
or earlier callers.) When quick mode is turned off, the debugger runs
slower, but it gets more information on previous stack frames. (I hope
I got this right... Lothar explained this to me once, and this is my
understanding of what he said.) In practice I don't pay a lot of attentio=
n
to whether or not I'm in quick mode. Non-quick mode doesn't seem to
slow the debugger down that much (at least for small programs), but then
again I haven't noticed a huge amount of difference in the info I get on
previous stack frames.

Have you tried Arachno in a Rails project ?

I do all my Rails work in Arachno, since it's such a great environment.

I've done some Rails debugging in Arachno, using both of the techniques
described at:

http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/How+To+Use+Arachno+Ruby+IDE+with+Ra=
ils

I haven't done a ton of Rails debugging, mostly because I don't need a
debugger for most of my Rails work, but when I have debugged Rails
programs in Arachno it's been plenty fast.

Take care,

Wayne

---
Wayne Vucenic
No Bugs Software
"Ruby and C++ Agile Contract Programming in Silicon Valley"

 

[Mark Ericson]

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I've been playing with Arachno and wish it had hyper navigation of the code
(like IDEA or Eclipse in the Java world). It would be great to ctrl-click
on a variable or function call and open up the source to that call in a new
window.

Is that perhaps already in the product and I've missed it?

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[Christer Nilsson]

Wayne!

I tried Debugger Quick and Slow mode. No difference. Same speed. Local
variables and parameters available on all the stack frames. Maybe this
feature is used in the other languages supported: Perl, PHP and Python

Slimeline is not so interesting on my 1600 x 1200 display. Good news
that Rails works well on ArachnoRuby. I've chipped in USD129 to Lothar

Thanks for the link!

Christer

 

[Patrick Hurley]

I've been playing with Arachno and wish it had hyper navigation of the co= de
(like IDEA or Eclipse in the Java world). It would be great to ctrl-clic= k
on a variable or function call and open up the source to that call in a n= ew
window.

I do not think this is in the current editor. In any case it would not
be possible to get right all of the time -- but it would be possible
to get right most of the time and would be a nice feature. Within a
file the navigator pane shows all of your normally defined methods
(and a nice fly over documentation window as well).

pth

 

[Wayne Vucenic]

Hey Christer,

I tried Debugger Quick and Slow mode. No difference.

Thanks for the data point. I didn't do any explicit tests, but I didn't re=
ally
notice a difference between the two modes.

Thanks for the link!

You're very welcome. Actually, I also sent you this link yesterday in a
private email. Maybe it got caught in your spam filter or something.
Let me know if you didn't get that email, and I'll resend it.

Take care,

Wayne

 

[Alexandru Popescu]

I am a user of Arachno for quite a while and I am quite happy with it,
except one aspect: the promise on the site about releases. I haven't
seen an update for a while, and I would expect at least some
feedback/estimations about this.

cheers,

/alex

 

[Wayne Vucenic]

Hi Hank,

Could you tell me how big was your program?

The Ruby program was only a few hundred lines, but it took a long while
to run because it was processing 5 million lines of text contained in
tens of thousands of files, and it was running on a 500MHz Pentium III.

RDE can not handle it because the debug speed is too slow?

That's correct. It was getting an error after about an hour of running
(without the debugger). RDE's debugger is so slow that it probably
would have taken days to reach that point if I ran in the debugger.

Take care,

Wayne

 

[Wayne Vucenic]

Hi Alexandru,

I am a user of Arachno for quite a while and I am quite happy with it,
except one aspect: the promise on the site about releases. I haven't
seen an update for a while

Yes, it would be nice to see a new release. I had an email exchange with
Lothar a while ago, and he was deeply into making some major changes
to the code. (He told me what he was working on, but since it
was a private conversation I won't repeat what he said.)

As someone who's considered writing and marketing a program myself,
I can empathize with having to simultaneously do design/development/
marketing/support/etc/etc/etc.

I'm always glad to see the new features Lothar puts in, but the
current version of Arachno is 100% usable for my day-to-day work.

Take care,

Wayne

 

[Jeff Wood]

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I use it from time to time @ this point ... the most recent beta release is
a bit less stable than I'd prefer, but Lothar is hard @ work on making the
foundation of the application more solid...

He's done a really good job with Arachno ... and I can't wait for the next
release ...

Just before the release he had started working on scriptability for the
environment ... ( to allow external custom scripts be able to interact with
the software ) ... and he had added some nice auto templates and electric
braces ...

All of which I love ... it really is a GOOD environment.

j.

Hi Alexandru,


Yes, it would be nice to see a new release. I had an email exchange with
Lothar a while ago, and he was deeply into making some major changes
to the code. (He told me what he was working on, but since it
was a private conversation I won't repeat what he said.)

As someone who's considered writing and marketing a program myself,
I can empathize with having to simultaneously do design/development/
marketing/support/etc/etc/etc.

I'm always glad to see the new features Lothar puts in, but the
current version of Arachno is 100% usable for my day-to-day work.

Take care,

Wayne

--
"Remember. Understand. Believe. Yield! -> http://ruby-lang.org"

Jeff Wood

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[Eric Promislow]

Just coming in to this thread to agree that the Komodo debugger is
relatively
slow. We originally wrote the debugger in pure Ruby, and found
debugging
large programs was very slow. We're shipping a version where a couple
of
the bottlenecks were rewritten in C, but that has revealed other
bottlenecks.

One thing I should point out is that the Komodo Ruby debugger works
with
any installed version > 1.8.0. We don't silo our own interpreter, so
whatever the
debugger says your code is doing, that's what it will most likely do
when
deployed. On the other hand, there is a fundamental speed-up I'd like
to do,
but it requires working with the API as of 1.8.3. At that point it
seems to make
sense to offer our own embedded interpreter optimized for faster
debugging,
but this falls in the thinking-out-loud category at this point.

- Eric

 

[Curt Hibbs]

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Just coming in to this thread to agree that the Komodo debugger is
relatively
slow. We originally wrote the debugger in pure Ruby, and found
debugging
large programs was very slow. We're shipping a version where a couple
of
the bottlenecks were rewritten in C, but that has revealed other
bottlenecks.

One thing I should point out is that the Komodo Ruby debugger works
with
any installed version > 1.8.0. We don't silo our own interpreter, so
whatever the
debugger says your code is doing, that's what it will most likely do
when
deployed. On the other hand, there is a fundamental speed-up I'd like
to do,
but it requires working with the API as of 1.8.3. At that point it
seems to make
sense to offer our own embedded interpreter optimized for faster
debugging,
but this falls in the thinking-out-loud category at this point.

Thanks for enlightening us, Eric.

Curt

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[tsumeruby]

Arachno seems nice at a quick glance. I don't agree with Lothar that
documentation would be a "waste of time", but it's his deal.

Perhaps a waste of time to some people, but documentation comes very good to
new people who want to program ruby. I think Lothar has forgotten what its
like to be a new programmer.

Tsume

 

[Patrick Hurley]

Or even an old programmer who would like to know how to use Arachno well.

I understand what you guys are saying, but if given the choice between
docs about the editor and a working Ruby macros with even a couple of
examples -- I know which I would pick.

pth

 

[soxinbox]

I think it should be free or have documentation. I don't think I should have
to invest both the time to figure out the editor without documentation, and
also pay for the product. I am willing to do either, but not both. After
using Arachno for the trial period, I am convinced it is a very good
product. I may decide to purchase in the future, but up till now, I can't
bring myself to pay $80 for an undocumented product.
Perhaps Lothar could trade free copies for documentation.

Some may have spotted the irony that I have already spent the time to learn
the tool, and would now not need the documentation. I am just stuborn that
way.

And just to reiterate, this is a great editor, and should be considered by
anyone that is developing ruby professionaly or can convince some corperate
behemoth to pay for it.

 

[Wayne Vucenic]

I can't bring myself to pay $80...

Actually, it's US $59, with volume discounts starting at 2 licenses.

Wayne

 

[tony summerfelt]

soxinbox wrote on 12/12/2005 8:07 PM:

to invest both the time to figure out the editor without documentation,

"figure it out"

i'm productive with both komodo and arachno-ruby...i didn't need to
figure anything out. i just used it.

granted, it wasn't 2 hours before a major project was due that i fired
up one of them and decided i needed to learn them as i was fnishing up
code...

i find both komodo and arachnoruby relatively intuitive. took me a few
minutes to get comfortable with each.

i'm sure if lothar gets annoyed enough at answering questions that
should in documentation he might release something...i'd much prefer
arachnoruby gets worked on before any time is spent on the docs...
and

 

[Christer Nilsson]

i'm productive with both komodo and arachno-ruby...

tony,

can you tell as about any debugger speed differences between komodo and
arachno?

what reasons do you see for using both?

christer

 

[Jeff Wood]

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Arachnos debugger is best-in-class... it *BY FAR* out runs any of the othe=
r
IDE debuggers...

j.

tony,

can you tell as about any debugger speed differences between komodo and
arachno?

what reasons do you see for using both?

christer

--
"Remember. Understand. Believe. Yield! -> http://ruby-lang.org"

Jeff Wood

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[tony summerfelt]

Christer Nilsson wrote on 12/13/2005 9:09 AM:

can you tell as about any debugger speed differences between komodo and
arachno?

i much prefer the debugger in arachnoruby. i often need to debug
threads and it's a breeze using the arachnoruby debugger for that. and
of course it's faster. i found ruby thread debugging in komodo a bit
confusing, but it's entirely possible that i'm too used to using
arachnoruby for that

what reasons do you see for using both?

for myself i also write perl and tcl/tk code and komodo is one stop
shopping there. i had komodo registered before the full ruby support
was added.

if i was only writing in ruby i'd would use arachnoruby exclusively.
and even though it's still an early release it's completely usable
for me...

 

[Gene Tani]

Christer Nilsson wrote on 12/13/2005 9:09 AM:

for myself i also write perl and tcl/tk code and komodo is one stop
shopping there. i had komodo registered before the full ruby support
was added.

if i was only writing in ruby i'd would use arachnoruby exclusively.
and even though it's still an early release it's completely usable
for me...

agreed, if you're doing perl, C, python, PHP, java etc you have 6
choices that i know of: vim, emacs, komodo, textmate, jedit and eclipse
in all its variations. Any others?

and agreed on arachno, it works well and if you have serious issues,
Lothar will respond quickly. I get the feeling he doesn't have a lot o
free time to eat donuts and watch Tv, so docs to come. And that's
"slimline" mode, folks.