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

[Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer@gmail.com>]

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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