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

[Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com>]

On Saturday 26 July 2008 13:17:55 Richard Jones wrote:
> Ah but here's the problem: the boilerplate is meaningful, and sooner
> or later you'll need to change it (eg. your project has some complex
> code generation or you want to script some automated tests).  Now your
> IDE is getting in the way, your beginner has to face all that "stuff"
> which was hidden behind the scenes, and (in one IDE I used) you
> couldn't edit the boilerplate at all!

Yes. So it would be a good idea to make the IDE as uninvasive as possible. 
Presumably it could even interact with findlib in order to let you choose 
library dependencies graphically.

> Not to mention serious real world problems like collaborating with
> people who don't want to use the IDE, version control, cross-
> compiling, applying patches, making tarballs & RPMs, uploading to your
> website, feeding patches back upstream, integration with l10n tools,
> etc.  Most of which are way beyond what IDEs offer.

Sure. So you continue to do all of those things conventionally. If you really 
wanted you could augment an IDE with functionality to upload to your website 
etc. but I'm not sure that would be particularly beneficial. My main interest 
was better source navigation.

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