Re: [Caml-list] geany as an ocaml ide

[Fabrice Le Fessant <Fabrice.Le_fessant@inria.fr>]

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Hi Gabriel,

   The goal of this editor is not to replace Emacs or VI, but to be part 
of a minimal distribution under Windows (by OCamlPro): the idea is that 
Windows users downloading OCaml should be able to start writing a simple 
OCaml program without installing anything else. Of course, under 
Linux/Mac OS X, or for bigger projects, they would be advised to use 
more powerful editors (Emacs, Vim, Notepad++, etc.).

   Moreover, the two paradigms are not incompatible: you can imagine two 
versions of the "editor", one version with an interface (GTK or 
whatever) to interact with beginners, another version with a 
argument/text interface, to interact with other editors, both providing 
the same set of functionalities (indentation, coloring, documentation, 
code navigation, etc.) through the same set of libraries, and why not a 
Javascript version through js_of_ocaml...

--Fabrice

On 02/11/2013 01:14 PM, Gabriel Scherer wrote:
> I must say I'm a bit dubious of dedicated editors: people prefer to
> use the tools they're familiar with from other languages, and I'm not
> really sure what the added value of a different tool would be. There
> have been attempts to write editors for OCaml (Cameleon{,2}, zed (
> https://github.com/diml/zed )...), so far none of them really gained
> traction.
>
> Volunteers work on whatever they fancy and I prefer not to interfere
> negatively -- though it's unclear in this case whether this is a
> personal side-project or an OCamlPro project. Moreover, all these
> efforts have led to interesting byproducts: various libraries from
> Cameleon (eg. ocaml-rss http://zoggy.github.com/ocamlrss/ ) and zed (
> and in particular the nice toplevel utop https://github.com/diml/utop
> ).
>
> That said, I would still feel more enthusiastic about a project that
> can be used with other tools people use ( this is a good property of
> ocp-indent for example ), or directly improving OCaml support about
> tools that already have a user base : syntax highlighting libraries
> for various editors, etc. For example, Online Client-side
> Javascript-implemented In-the-cloud programming editors are all the
> rage now, they use a relatively small number of popular Javascript
> edition engines under the hood, is there work to do to make sure OCaml
> a first-class citizen there?
>
> On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 12:40 PM, Louis Gesbert
> <louis.gesbert@ocamlpro.com> wrote:
>> OCaml is definitely lacking in this area; I am at the moment working precisely
>> on solving this issue, with a dedicated Gtk editor that runs on Linux, OSX and
>> Windows. It is pretty basic at the moment but already has code edition and
>> working toplevel interaction (no compilation or project yet).
>>
>> Release is intended in a few months from now, with sufficient features for
>> beginners and students. If successful, it will then be extended to handle
>> bigger projects (multi-file, build system integration, etc.).
>>
>> Until then, you may see the project's github page at
>> https://github.com/OCamlPro/ocp-edit-simple (name temporary)
>>
>> --
>> Louis Gesbert, OCamlPro
>>
>> Le Monday 11 February 2013 01:49:41, Martin DeMello a écrit :
>>> I spent some time last night going through all the "what is a good
>>> (beginner's) ide for ocaml?" threads I could find online, and trying
>>> out the various options suggested. I ruled out the following:
>>>
>>> * vim, emacs and eclipse (not beginner-friendly; people who want to
>>> use them will know how to do it)
>>> * anything that did not provide a binary install for Windows and OSX,
>>> and wasn't a simple configure/make/make install on linux
>>> * anything that needed fiddling with config files just to install it
>>> * anything that needed the OCaml sources to be independently present
>>> and configured (!)
>>> * anything that was abandoned, or didn't seem to support OCaml 4
>>>
>>> I was left with Geany and Komodo Edit as possibilities, and Geany won
>>> out by letting me open up a test.ml file and immediately being able to
>>> find and run the OCaml compiler. At least on Linux, it was a perfect
>>> beginner-friendly experience.
>>>
>>> So what do people think about ocaml.org officially promoting Geany as
>>> the answer to "I'm learning OCaml; what is a good IDE?"? I'd be happy
>>> to write up a page on it and contribute it.
>>>
>>> martin
>>
>> --
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>

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