Re: [Caml-list] New Ocaml Plug-in for NetBeans

[Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com>]

On Saturday 26 July 2008 13:07:55 Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:
> Jon Harrop wrote:
> > Yet Make is not expressive enough so we have OMake, OCamlBuild.
>
> I find Make expressive enough. I don't use these others.

The others are particularly useful when you have multiple stages of 
compilation that introduce new dependencies at compile time.

> > I assume nedit does not even have basic type throwback, let alone
> > documentation throwback?
>
> There are ways of getting this to work with nedit but I never
> bothered because I don't like it.

I find type throwback in Emacs invaluable and I miss documentation throwback 
enormously.

> If I need documentation I read the mli files. With bash command
> line completion in an xterm I can find the one I want in a second
> and I keep it open in a nedit window and then alt-tab between the
> window I'm editing and the mli file I'm reading. Sometimes I stick
> the two side by side.

That is exactly what I do when writing OCaml at the moment and I find that it 
leaves a lot to be desired.

For example, I cannot even jump to the definition of an identifier reliably. I 
can look at the identifier and guess where it came from, potentially having 
to manually trawl through directories of source files exactly as you 
describe, hoping to find the correct location from many identifiers with the 
same name. But it would be much easier if I could simply jump directly to the 
location of the definition and then jump back. That could be done from plain 
text editors.

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/?e