Re: IDE

[Nicolas Roard]

On 9/9/05, Thomas Gamper <e0107543@student.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> Only one question: Is the GNUstep IDE project (ide.roard.com) still alive. I'm
> really interested in such a project and I'm willing to contribute, since I'm
> an ObjC coder myself.

Well, we never wrote any code, as the status page
(http://ide.roard.com/wakka.php?wiki=Status) can tell you... and as
far as I can tell, nobody is working on it (as in, writing code). The
main reason I started this wiki was because I wanted to discuss some
ideas I had about IDEs. I knew I hadn't the time to write one, and I
thought it could nonetheless be interesting to debate features/ideas
for when I (or somebody else) will have some time to devote to it, and
a wiki was ideal for that.

Now, I'd love to start writing a good IDE for Objective-C, or
contribute to ProjectCenter, but I'm already behind schedule for other
gnustep-related projects ;-) so I don't think I'll start anytime soon.
And I think the same hold true for Stefan and Quentin.. so if you're
willing to start something, go on ! :D

Actually, I wrote something slightly related recently: a palette for
Gorm, based on StepTalk, that let you create and code objects
completely inside Gorm, using StepTalk methods. Stefan added some nice
additions to StepTalk in the meantime to support objects directly
(Actors, see http://steptalk.blogspot.com/), so I should use them
instead now..

Anyway, the result is that one thing I'd prefer over working on an
Objective-C IDE, would be to work on a separate IDE based on StepTalk
-- you'd create objects on the fly, no need to compile, you'd inspect
their state at runtime, etc. Basically you would end up with something
quite similar to a Smalltalk environment, but neatly integrated with
Objective-C, with the ability to use ObjC objects for speed when
needed, and of course, Gorm. And with any language supported by
StepTalk.
Possibly this IDE would then evolve to support Objective-C directly.. 

-- 
Nicolas Roard
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
  -Arthur C. Clarke