ActiveState releases Komodo for GNU/Linux

TorinEdge writes "ActiveState has finally released (as in out of Beta) their Komodo IDE for the GNU/Linux platform! Komodo is an integrated dev environment for open source languages. It provides colour-coded editing (and "code-folding" for collapsing sections of code), debugging etc... It's optimized for Perl, Python, PHP, Tcl, and XSLT. Includes the RxToolkit for testing/checking your regular expressions; a godsend. Get it while it's hot!"

Comments

Re:What the ??!?

[rickms]

Just becase it's not free means that /. can't talk about it? Last I checked it was "News for Nerds", not "News about open-souce/Free Softward for Nerds" Comon... Rick

Eclipse?

[variable]

Most of these languages are also supported (or in the process of being supported) in Eclipse. Which is open-source and cross platform and easy to extend.

Re:Why oh why

[GusherJizmac]

The point is, why don't they use those editors as their basis for their integrated editor? Why re-invent the wheel so many times? Clearly, people won't use an IDE because of the superior text/code editing abilities; vim and emacs beat them all hands down. I understand they may not want to release their product as open-source and that may be a factor, but I guess it's a larger issue. Look at freshmeat and see how many IDEs there are, and how many "programmer's editors" there are. Seems like an awful waste of time and talent.

What I really need is...

[cornice]

What I really need is an IDE that helps me manage projects but has support for xemacs, gvim or whatever happens to be the best editor today. I know there is another post like this labeled as flaim bait but I think that recreating the editor is a mistake. That's one area where there are fast, mature, time tested, extensible options. We need more IDEs that recognize this and solve the project management issues that exist rather than waste time on the parts that are already done right.

Re:pricing

[ilofwyr]

Actually, that pricing/licensing description is quite incorrect. The correct wording (copied directly from the site) is:

2.0 Professional Edition $295
For commercial usage. Includes Source Code Control Integration, Visual Package Manager, and ActiveState GUI Builder

2.0 Personal Edition $29.95
For non-commercial and educational usage only.

Anonymous Coward here clearly has a nack for fiction.

Re:Why oh why

[Twirlip of the Mists]

The point is, why don't they use those editors as their basis for their integrated editor? Why re-invent the wheel so many times?

Excellent question. The answer is: the GPL.

Emacs is released under the GPL. VIM is released under a license that is, for all intents and purposes, just like the GPL. (They call it "GPL-compatible.") The restrictions placed on developers by the GPL make it impossible for a commercial concern to use either of these programs, or components of them, as part of an IDE.

If FooCorp, or whomever, wanted to develop an IDE using the VIM editor as the embedded source code editor and glomming on IDE features, they would be required, under the VIM license, to release the source code for their IDE. Nobody in his right mind would want to do that, so as a result every IDE has to have its own editor.

If they released the VIM editor under the BSD license, this problem would not exist.

Free IDE

[prisonernumber7]

On my never ending search to get to know different things, I stumbled upon the Anjuta IDE.

Trying Anjuta was my first attempt at using an IDE since a long time -- and frankly, although Anjuta indeed seems to have a lot of features and matter of factly impressed me by unseen things such as mentioned "code folding" it was not my cup of tea, but I believe that was a personal matter. :)

I gave the IDE a try approximately two or three months ago and it seemed to have quite a bit of bugs. Still, if you are developing from within a free operating system and looking for an IDE you might want give it a try before you shell out the bucks for the above mentioned software.

Re:Why oh why

[GusherJizmac]

Can't be done. If you're using a binary version of Editor X, then you're not integrated with it. At best, you're using system() calls to fire off an instance of the editor for each source file in the project, which is not the same thing at all.
Not true. Not sure about emacs, but vim can be run in client/server mode, and you can issue commands to a running instance to basically do anything in the editor you want. A rudimentary version of this is already possible in Visual Studio.

Visual Studio is passable, only because the editor is fairly configurable and it has decent integrated help. I've used Project Builder for WebObjects and on Mac OS X and it is horrible, IMO. It has a very counterintuitive interface, poorly configurable editor, it's slow as death (despite the fact that it's been in existence for many years), and the GUI builder's drag&drop/wiring thing is very difficult to use, compared to what else is out there. I feel sorry for anyone using it that doesn't have a Dual 1Ghz G4 and 1Gig of memory.

A Review of Komodo 2.0 by Simon Cozens

[alfaiomega]

There's a Review of Komodo 2.0 (printer/human friendly version) by Simon Cozens on Perl.com from October 09, 2002:

"Every time I get a new copy of ActiveState's Komodo IDE, I do a review that invariably ends "this would be the perfect IDE for me if I were the sort of person who used IDEs". And every time I get the next release, I get closer to being persuaded I should be using IDEs. With Komodo 2.0, ActiveState is getting very, very close to persuading me - but it's not there yet. Let's see what it got right and got wrong this time. (...)"

Read the whole thing, it's more objective than the ActiveState's review. I personally don't use IDEs at all, like Simon Cozens, and I find his review much more interesting from my point of view. If I am to ever start using IDEs I have to know not if it's good for an IDE, but if it's good for people who prefered using Emacs/vi so far.