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ActiveState Discontinues VisualPerl/Python
Noiser writes "ActiveState discontinues VisualPerl and VisualPython for Windows. Demand doesn't justify further development, they say. No, they don't mean to open-source these products, due to licensing problems with the inseparable MS Visual Studio integration code. Back to vi/Notepad/Komodo, then..."
Personally, it's understandable that there wasn't enough demand to keep the products viable. Any Perl hacker I know either does their coding in a text editor or a different IDE than MS Visual Studio, since most of them are Linux/BSD buffs and only have Windows for gaming or to be able to run a specific Windows program for a client.
It's worth noting that they'll, upon customer request, replace each license for the Visual products with an equivalent license for their own Komodo IDE at no charge. And while they can't open source the ActivePerl products for VS2002 or VS2003, it looks like they're going to make them available for free. So if you feel no need to upgrade to Visual Studio 2005, you now have a new goodie as consolation.
Start a happiness pandemic
For a minute there I thought this was just another example of perl code.
My bet is its still compilable.
liqbase
Visual Studio??? + Perl???
Isn't that what bad software engineers are forced to use for eternity in Hell?
Yeeeechhh!!!
I felt the same way.. and am happey that it is just the add on's.. that should have been worded better in the posting..
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Besides as long as there's Emacs for Windows, I can't imagine wanting to use anything else for Unix-origin languages.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I used to work at a large bank (JPMC) and we had project with two large parts: 40K lines of Perl and another 25K lines of visual C#. I looked into merging these lines into a single machine.
My manager was
I chose to not merge this stuff based on the fact that Visual Perl was a little too "out there" (unusual) and I knew I'd get looked at funny by the architecture review committee (you know, big corp == second guessing design decisions). So, I kept what we had.
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
If you want plugins for a big heavy IDE for Perl and Python then Eclipse still works just fine. For Perl there's EPIC, and for Python there's PyDev. Both are reasonably mature, quite featureful, and generally pleasant to work with.
The only reason to be using vi/Notepad/whatever is if you are wanting to stay away from big heavy IDEs. That's not to say that isn't a perfectly sensible reason, just that the existence or not of VisualPerl and VisualPython really doesn't have a lot to do with it.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Seriously folks, this is good news. The more toolmakers who drop plug-in support for Microsoft's windows only junk in favor of cross-platform targeted tools, the better. It seeds a nice message about the future legitimacy (or lack thereof) of locking into Windows...
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
Back to vi/Notepad/Komodo, then..
Uh, back to? Personally, I never left.
hi mom!
... or use notepad++, which kicks ass.
Information is a process.
Maybe for shell scripting, but for software/web development, I couldn't imagine life without a good IDE.
Don't get me wrong. I could hand-code everything in notepad if I so desired. I make sure to never become so dependent on the IDE that I lose the ability to think for myself.
But IDEs are just tools that make development so much quicker. They list all project files for easy opening, and keep them organized. They allow for compilation without having to write your own batch file. And - especially with VS.NET 2003 and 2005 - intellisense of some sort is simply inseperable from yours truely.
Intellisense saves me - easily - thousands of key-strokes per day. Being able to type two or three letters and hit tab or ctrl-space-tab to complete keywords or object names makes coding a line incredibly fast. Hitting . and having immediate keystroke access to an object's entire interface is a huge time saver. Anyone who thinks they can code at the same speed in notepad/emacs/vi is just plain nuts. Seriously. Nuts. Mod me down if you must but... Still nuts.
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
Quick answer: ask google.
... ...
EPIC - Eclipse Perl Integration
e-p-i-c.sourceforge.net/ - 2k - Cached - Similar pages
Perl + Eclipse = lots of interest | Computerworld Blogs
Yesterday I taught my two Perl/Eclipse classes here at EclipseWorld .
Eclipse + Perl, seems a good answer for all people interested on Perl IDEs,
www.computerworld.com/blogs/node/891 - 36k - Cached - Similar pages
http://stephan.sugarmotor.org
http://sourceforge.net/projects/rubyeclipse
There's certainly one for Ruby so I'm guess Perl and Python shouldn't be far behind.
Cure cancer.. and stuff! www.team45.info
It is also comparitively painless to build Perl natively Windows, given the now-free Visual C++ commandline compiler environment. (We don't do much C++ on Windows where I work, so Visual Studio 6 is still state-of-the-art.)
The native Win32 version does not suffer from any of the issues the Cygwin port has; it's a real Windows program, so you get real Windows paths and so on. It can even look for things like perl5lib in the Registry, if you're into that sort of thing.
A quick question. Has anyone made a plugin for Eclipse to handle Perl or any of the other popular scripting languages?
Yes, people have made some very good plugins for Eclipse to handle Perl, Python, and other scripting languages. If you're willing to use Eclipse they turn it into quite a nice environment for the scripting language fo your choice, including debugging, good code completion, on the fly syntax checking and error flagging, and many other nice features.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Here's a list of Perl implementations for Windows. I don't know very much about most of them, but I've heard good things about PXPerl.
That's nice, but you really should be able to build your project with one step outside your IDE. Most Makefiles, ant build files, jam files, or god knows what else you use to build are 99% the same anyway. Make a single template and it might take you 15 seconds to customize it for projects that aren't too weird. As easy as starting a new project in VS.net, for sure.
There's not a decent programmer's editor around that doesn't have similar functionality available. Vim and Emacs are just two. No fancy trademark, same great taste.
Anybody who would make generalizations like this while obviously not knowing anything about what life is like outside VS is a complete idiot. We don't get the pretty widgets, but most of the shit you think is so nifty about Visual Studio was available several years prior to people in the know.
Broaden your horizons, newbie. Delusions to the contrary aside, you obviously have lost the ability to think for yourself.
Sorry, but I can't trust your opinion, because there's a fairly good chance that intellisense has rotted your mind
The lack of demand is unsurprising.
1. Before you can use the plugin you have to buy MS Visual Studio, which costs $arm+leg.
2. In competition is an abundance good Python IDEs for Windows, both free and the pay-for-it kind.
Now, this is somewhat OT, but if they offered a Python plugin for Xcode on OS X, I would pay lots of real money for that. And Xcode is free, so the only cost to the user would be the cost of plugin. There is still no Python IDE on OS X which combines the following features.
1. Integration with Interface Builder.
2. A debugger.
3. Aqua interface.
Those seem like basic requirements for a professional Python development IDE on OS X but no such thing exists. The best available gives you two out of the three; Wing is nice, but runs in and Xterm on OS X with non-native widgets; dog-slow and but-ugly user interface. There is a nice optional package to support Python in Xcode, really cool, except it has no debugger.
I use Objective C on OS X, it's ok, but would switch to Python in an instant if I had a Python IDE on OS X as good as is Xcode for Objective C.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Um, I did mention Emacs. You didn't think we all used it because it was such a brilliant Notepad substitute, did you?
In all seriousness, I've had pretty much all the functionality you mentioned for years, but for many more languages. Visual Studio wasn't the first widely popular IDE, you know.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
*shrugs* Does it matter? If people aren't using the product who is going to care if it is discontinued. Lame idea for a story.
Now, a story on why the products failed might be interesting. A real study in how programmers select tools and what kind of tools they really want. That'd be worthy of discussion.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Well you *nix wussies can use your overblown IDEs like vi but we real men on Windoze just "copy con accounting.pl" and code away.
So do vim and emacs (in vim, all my recently opened projects are in the file menu, or I can open ~/src/projects in the file browser and pick one--it'll remember which files I had open in which windows the last time I was working on it, reset all my bookmarks, etc).
They allow for compilation without having to write your own batch file.
Compilation? We're talking perl/python here, right? I hit F11 to restart my web servers (and reread all the code), or select the client I want to restart from a menu in vim (we run seperate web servers for each of the clients we host, I just pick the one I'm want to switch to from the menu--F11 restarts the one I'm currently working on if I don't want to switch). Of course, since I'm working in an interpreted language I rarely need a restart anyway.
But at any rate, clicking the "Make" button in my vim toolbar will build the current project when I do C/C++/Java dev work. You're right that I have to create a Make file, but you're going to have to do that anyway for any multiplatform project--and if I'm doing something like GUI design, my GUI builder creates the Makefile for me anyway.
And when I hit make, if the compilation failed it'll jump me to the file/line where the first error was; I can fix it, go to the next error, etc from the toolbar (or keystrokes), then hit the make button again when I'm satisfied. As I jump around between errors, it shows the compiler's error messages in the status line.
Intellisense saves me - easily - thousands of key-strokes per day. Being able to type two or three letters and hit tab or ctrl-space-tab to complete keywords or object names makes coding a line incredibly fast.
Meta-/ in emacs or Ctrl-P/Ctrl-N in vim will do word completion, I don't know about emacs but in vim they'll limit it to currently applicable tags (so if I'm doing Java/C++ and I call object.foo then it'll only complete methods that start with foo and are methods of whatever class "object" is--or in C it'll only complete struct members, etc). I'd be shocked if emacs didn't do something similar.
Vim 7 will also have OmniComplete (it's in the dev tree already) which is pretty much like Intellisense if the using a period and getting a dropdown (instead of just getting a tab-completion style listing of matches) is really that a big deal to you.
Emacs and vim aren't wimpy text editors. Other things I can do:
1. If I'm editing a python file, I get a nice dropdown menu showing the parent classes of the one I'm editing, the child classes, and all the methods. I can select them from the menu to jump to them.
2. If I'm typing a call I get the method signature and beginning of help in my status line. So if, say, I type "cmp(" then the status line reads:If I hit F1, I get the full help text.
3. I can jump to tags easily, so if I see a call to "foo.blargle()" then I can click on "blargle" and it'll jump into the blargle method of class foo; I can keep drilling down through function calls, then hit back to pop back up the call stack to where I started.
4. I can get diffs against other versions of source control, where it shows the 2 versions side by side with the changes highlighted (different colors for what was added, removed, or modified). And I can easily check files into/out of source control.
5. I can do folding/outlining (so if I'm editing a file, I can toggle between seeing the whole file or seeing an outline of just the class/method definitions, then find what I'm looking for and expand back to seeing everything--it's far more powerful than that once you're used to it).
Lots more, but those are a few highlights.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
GPL is viral. Most of the work ActiveState did was write an integration layer with the VS IDE. I bet their integration layer code can be released, but what good is that unless you have the VS shell?
Anyway, VS IDE produces code. You should still be able to edit that code in your favourite editor and compile it with your favourite compiler.
I tried PyDev for Eclipse but couldn't get the debugging to work. When I installed plone, I found PythonWin in the program files menu. That's the best editor/debugger that I have found for python development so far. It is much faster than Eclipse. Statement completion is spotty for those who like that sort of thing. PythonWin is also Windows only whereas PyDev for Eclipse is cross platform. PythonWin can edit/debug any python program. It is not really tied to plone.
I've been using it for about a month and love it. I love the price too, it's FREE as in somethingrather.. And it not only works with perl, but also with C++, PHP, Python, HTML.. and a ton more.. even text files look better!
http://www.pspad.com
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The moon may be smaller than Earth, but it's further away.
Ok open your c++ code from VS in to eclipse or other IDE.. It looks really nice in there doesn't it.
That depends entirely on your point of view.
We write very portable C++ at work, but most of us use some version of Visual Studio as the IDE, because it's simply better than anything else available (even if it has been going backwards in several areas since they started going all .Netty, with the result that several of my colleagues have deliberately reverted to VC++ 6 from newer versions).
We also use a lot of Perl scripts, for which having a decent editor is handy. Ironically, I was thinking just the other day that it might be worth buying VisualPerl for those of us who write and maintain the scripts. Now it sounds like they're going to give it away for free anyway, which would no doubt be very useful to us.
So in our case, I have no problem with using software that only runs on a Microsoft platform. None of the stuff we write is Windows-only: both the C++ we develop and the scripts we use to support it run on many UNIX-based platforms as well. However, since I develop on a Windows box, using a Windows-based product, why would you want to stop me using something that fits in well with my development environment and helps me do my job?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
A lot of people have already mentioned the PyDev plugin for Eclipse. You may also like to know about TruStudio (another Eclipse-based IDE) which supports Python and PHP amongst other "scripting languages", and perhaps something like Stani's Python Editor. I've got all three, plus a couple of other generic editors like Vim, Notepad++, NewEdit, JEdit, also PythonWin (which comes with ActivePython, but you can get it separately for vanilla Python.org).
Matt
Before you flame me or mod me a troll please try both IDEs. I did. Eclipse is flaky and slow. Visual Stuio is slick and fast. Right now I use SciTe editor but I'm gonna be using Visual Studio if I have to write a free PHP plugin myself. I develop for a living and when it comes to productivity I just cannot use an IDE that flakes out or bogs down every 30 seconds. Even Zend Studio is a bugfest. I'm not gonna pay for the privledge of debugging someone else's software.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
1. Change to the top directory of your Python project
2. find . -name '*.py' | ctags -L -
Tags now work.
Of course, even without that they'll work for some things (vim tries to make decent guesses if you don't have a tags file).
rage, rage against the dying of the light
Perl plus VisualStudio - I can see why this does not really sell. ActiveState's Perl is an excellent product however and it is surprising how well applications run on it between Windows and UNIX.
An IDE typically reflects a programming environment where coding must be spread across a multitude of small files. In it's extreme, I'm not a big fan of this style as I don't think it documents the code well. An IDE often kicks in a build system, a debugger, a configuration management system, perhaps even a work management system. Integrated into one product none of these components is going to be ideal compared to dedicated tools. It much like an integrated stereo system - yes it does everything, but it will never sounds as good as discrete audio components.
I'm hard pressed to why one needs something more than emacs (a rabid few might argue it is the only application one would ever need!). Admittedly customizing emacs in Lisp is not exactly easy to learn...
The bottom line is that Microsoft fans (who would shell out big bucks for VisualStudio) are typically not going program in Perl. Similarly, those of us more familiar with the UNIX world aren't going to program in VisualBasic whatever its possible merits might be. The two worlds just don't cross much, we don't read the same web pages, we don't go to the same conferences.But wouldn't it be nice if they could do some work with the ICSharpDevelop team to add support for Perl and Python to SharpDevelop/MonoDevelop?
.Net Framework already, which SharpDevelop uses as much as they can.
Some of the VisualStudio stuff they talk about not being able to Open Source is probably in the
You mean I could type std::c"lists of namespace functions with c to chose from" with vi or emacs?
Its nice with complex libraries. All the functions and objects are listed and the type of arguments for all. You can get work done very very fast.
I wish I had this for linux or with perl or python to help write code faster and easier.
I feel like I am repeating myself ad nauseam - call it preaching if you will. But I think that any user of any IDE and certainly any developer of any IDE needs to look at Eclipse/Java. This is the state of the art.
Surely, word completion better than nothing, but Eclipse has changed the whole way I write Java programs. Nothing out there like it for Python, unfortunately - the PyDev plugin only does some word completion and some very welcome but very basic error detection and that's it.
Here is what I do with Eclipse every day:
- I don't declare variables (ok in python you don't anyway), instead i write foo = obj.getFoo() and auto-fix it to declare it local or instance variable as desired.
- I Open the calling chains for a method. That is, I see all code that calls my method and all code that calls these methods and so on. I get a whole inverse calling tree; takes about a second.
- Find all usages of a variable. Or all write to operations. Or all read operations on a variable.
- Remove variables that are not used. For example Eclipse marks all variables that are "never read". That means the variable is there, gets assigned to something but is then never used. Happens a lot with legacy code.
- Hover over methods / classes to see the docs
- Auto-complete that is smart. For example if I write
"Foo myFoo = obj." and then hit ctrl-space, it will list those methods that return an object of type Foo first. The same could be done for Python even though it's dynamically typed.
- rename methods/variables - the rename affects all code inside the project and even all code defined in dependent projects. What was once a huge and scary (will it work?) global search and replace operation is now a no-brainer. Which makes it MUCH more likely that things are named sensibly just because renaming is so easy. Rename also allows moving classes to new packages and so on - all automatically updated.
- Add / remove method parameters. Again, globally, all dependent code is automatically updated and I get to define a default value for add.
- See errors marked as I type. There is no compile button. Everything is compiled at all times, in the background. This is the way it should be, IMHO.
- Auto imports. Say you write a = ExternalObject() - Eclipse will automatically add that to the import statements. If it can't be found in the project scope but is in the project scope of another project in the workspace it will offer to add that other project to the dependencies and import the class. Basically I never waste a thought on import statements. I never even look at them unless there's a conflict (they are folded away)
- Mark several lines of code and extract a method from it.
- Tons of other things too of course.
I hear that IDEA and even VS.NET can do the same things. But all the others really need to take a good sharp look at these things and improve their IDEs. Yeah, XCode, that would be you. It's not 1995 anymore. Or 1975 for you Emacs guys. Emacs was very competitive for a long time mainly because there was no innovation in IDEs. That has changed now.
And vi is free as in syphilis
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
Crimson Editor is nice and free, but not FSF free.
I'll tell you what, when I find someone that knows nothing about what life is like outside of VS, I'll let you know. I spent years writing C, C++, Java, Python, and even PHP/Html in emacs (no, I never decided to take the 10 days it takes to get aquainted with VI to get aquainted with VI.) I spent time coding ASP in variations of notepad or enhanced notepad applications. I had moderate code completion, syntax highlighting, the works.
I speak from a whole lot of experience here. Emacs and VIM are simply outdated in their ability to match the speed/enhancements of a modern IDE. I'm sorry I'm putting your baby down here, but getting so emotional about emacs is a bit over the top, and shows that zealotry cannot be combatted, no matter how rational the argument.
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project