Brad, would you be willing to share your PropTool-compatible FP conversion algorithm? Either real or pseudo-code. I'd be interested to see what it would take to get Homespun in line. Please start a new thread if you decide to share.
The simple answer is Eclipse will handle Mac, Linux, and Windows. It would also support Spin, Pasm, SXB & SXasm, Pbasic, PropBasic and their help sections.
I started using Eclipse after I volunteered to work with a FIRST team. A few mentors ported Microchip’s MPLAB C18 to Eclipse, now the FIRSTies (our future engineers) use the Wind River Workbench subversion of Eclipse. Eclipse plug-ins have been created to support professionals, students and hobbyists for ARM, AVR & Arduino’s, and all MPLAB tool chains. I have seen additional plug-ins available for an enormous variety of languages including versions of Microsoft Assembler and Basic.
Three of Eclipse’s simple features that I appreciated were the differences in how it handled its file directory compared to Visual Studio 2008. Another was being able to freely make templates of any kind to drop in place where ever I needed it. Dragging and dropping any portion of the workbench and docking it to my second monitor. These are simple features, but they served me well when I took my first C++ course, while the class used Visual Studio.
By creating a Master IDE with Eclipse, we would be encouraging professionals, students, and other hobbyists that are already using Eclipse to download the Parallax product plug-ins to their familiar IDE; opposed to downloading a different IDE for every Parallax product, sub-language, and customer created tools.
A support forum could be created to encourage plug-in development. There has been many posts supporting this general idea for some time now, but somebody always has a problem with any possible answer. Despite this, Eclipse is still supported better than any other open source IDE I know of, and it is far more likely that, anybody wanting to tackle such a project would be able to “get up to speed” easier with Eclipse and its mature support base. This is sample of my links on Eclipse, enjoy.
The classic Eclipse download: the Eclipse Platform, Java Development Tools, and Plug-in Development Environment, including source and both user and programmer documentation http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/
The simple answer is Eclipse will handle Mac, Linux, and Windows. It would also support Spin, Pasm, SXB & SXasm, Pbasic, PropBasic and their help sections.
I started using Eclipse after I volunteered to work with a FIRST team. A few mentors ported M
I've worked a couple of big names that used Eclipse. One thing is, somebody has "be in charge". I vote Capt.Quirk be the leader on this, as he has the most familiarity on how to use it.
What does Eclipse need? There are an awful lots of links in this post alone, what does a person have to do to get Eclipse set up for use with the prop?
The simple answer is Eclipse will handle Mac, Linux, and Windows. It would also support Spin, Pasm, SXB & SXasm, Pbasic, PropBasic and their help sections.
I agree 100% as I said this earlier in this thread. However, it is not as easy as you make it out to be to do this. I have been looking at this for several months and there is a lot of work involved. The first step is really to have a grammar that describes spin and then basically build the compiler first. There are some tools that will help with the plugins, mainly I think IMP will be a good starting point for the IDE.
My personal intentions for Eclipse was to take PropBasic and SXB in their current form as a command line compiler, and create a tool chain to work with Eclipse. Then start customizing all the great features of Eclipse to work with the command line program. I was trying to do so because of my personal need for more IDE tools.
The Plug-ins for C18 were not very big, and they worked great. I have used the Cheat Sheets in the PDE a few times, and they seem to make the task easy. But I don't understand much of the terminology. That is why I gathered all those links (and those are just a few of them). I need to read more of my links now that I have some spare time again.
One of the features of Eclipse was to automatically seek and acquire a compiler, so long as it knows it exists.
Concerning Spin, I know nothing about dll's or api's. Until today I always thought PASM was part of Propellant? Parallax also provides the Basic Stamp Tokenizer. It was my thought that people with real programming experience, and good documentation would know how to integrate them into Eclipse plug-ins or rich-client application.
(Prof_Braino), The pictures document the Eclipse cheat sheet process for building a plug-in. After downloading the Classic Eclipse, set the workspace to the "Plug In Device" perspective, then->Help Menu->Cheat Sheets
The simple answer is Eclipse will handle Mac, Linux, and Windows. It would also support Spin, Pasm, SXB & SXasm, Pbasic, PropBasic and their help sections.
I started using Eclipse after I volunteered to work with a FIRST team. A few mentors ported Microchips MPLAB C18 to Eclipse, now the FIRSTies (our future engineers) use the Wind River Workbench subversion of Eclipse. Eclipse plug-ins have been created to support professionals, students and hobbyists for ARM, AVR & Arduinos, and all MPLAB tool chains. I have seen additional plug-ins available for an enormous variety of languages including versions of Microsoft Assembler and Basic.
Interestingly, Microchip themselves has chosen the NetBeans IDE for their new MPLAB-X IDE. It has many advantages over Eclipse.
Here are Microchip's reasons for going with NetBeans:
We had many reasons for going with NetBeans instead of Eclipse. However, whichever platform we chose, we would have had the same amount of work to do, so the wheel had to be reinvented either way. Just because Eclipse works with our competitor's platforms doesn't mean that any part of it will automatically work with ours. We would still have to write all the code required to tie the IDE to our compilers, assemblers, hardware tools and to target it to the PIC architecture.
Some of the reasons we chose NetBeans:
1. While Eclipse has been around longer and is used by everyone else, it is becoming widely acknowledged among many developer forums that Eclipse is no longer ahead of NetBeans in terms of its feature set. Plus, Eclipse seems to be bloated and slow compared to NetBeans. We've had in-house experience with Eclipse in the form of Hi-Tech's Hi-Tide IDE. So, we had a good basis for comparison.
2. Because Eclipse is used by everyone else, it would be very difficult for us to work closely with their team to get the features we need added to the core IDE. Conveniently for us, NetBeans was looking for an embedded partner and we were looking for an open source IDE at the same time. Being their only embedded partner means we have a very close working relationship with them and are better able to have the core IDE tweaked to suit our needs.
3. NetBeans has been around for many years and just like Eclipse is open source and free to use. There is a huge developer community working with NetBeans and many developers have looked at its code. So, we haven't had to spend time or money "finding and fixing kinks" - no more so than we would have had to do with Eclipse.
Using NetBeans with Schliemann, one can even define one's own language:
and add support for it to the IDE. That might be useful in a Propeller context.
Having used it for some time, and having used Eclipse a lot as well, I'm quite sure that they made the right choice.
My favourite IDE is Rowley CrossStudio, used with their ARM, MSP430 and AVR tools. That is written in C++ and is very slick compared to both Eclipse and NetBeans, which are written in Java.
Java bothers me a little, now that it's controlled by Oracle. Moreover, my experience with OpenOffice under OS/X suggests that it's really, really sloooow.
Seriously, when I first used Eclipse some years ago I found it was so slow that it was unusable. On current hardware, it is still a bit sluggish, as is NetBeans, but they are usable. OpenOffice is slow compared to MS Office, but I use it (under Windows) because it's free. It runs quite well on the hardware I have.
I change my vote from post #65.
I now vote that Capt Quirk AND Yoda lead the Eclipse effort, as Yoda knows what the hard parts are.
I further vote that Leon be lead on the NetBeans effort, as he has extensive experience on NetBean and Schliemann which could be the deciding factor if it gives a huge benefit in setting up the Prop's language items.
Also, he will be in the best position to explain the advantages and disadvatages of both the Eclipse and NetBeans options.
Ideally, we should be able to tell which options makes the best progress in the shortest amount of time and effort. But this decision will likely need expertise that the average prop tinkerer (i.e. me) does not have.
Is there anybody else that uses NetBeans that can share the load?
Seriously, when I first used Eclipse some years ago I found it was so slow that it was unusable. On current hardware, it is still a bit sluggish, as is NetBeans, but they are usable. OpenOffice is slow compared to MS Office, but I use it (under Windows) because it's free. It runs quite well on the hardware I have.
I found Eclipse to startup slow, but after that it's fine except for running and terminating a program. I've used NetBeans more over the last few years and have enjoyed it mostly. I never tried to use it with anything except Java though. I've used Eclipse with C and compared to the Java "profile" it s*cks.
So, I guess I would vote for NetBeans. I'm not interested in developing any of this though since I already have plenty to do. Good luck.
I am looking for a feature driven IDE for the Propeller, not speed.
I had problems with Eclipse initially, but the good features out weighed the negatives. With a little work, and Wascana, all the pieces came together.
For those who want a better C/C++ sub-version, try this one http://sourceforge.net/projects/wascana/
Also I vote Prof_Braino to be the supreme leader of this effort
I have used both Eclipse-based (XMOS IDE, Flex Builder, AVR32 Studio) and NetBeans (Java, C and nowadays that I mostly abandoned Java... python), but I have much more experience with NetBeans (>7 years) than with Eclipse. XMOS's and Atmel efforts with Eclipse are good and bring a usable and enjoyable experience. Debugging is well... slow. Flex Builder OTOH, in its versions 2 and 3, show how an Eclipse-based IDE should not be implemented. It is just half-backed and the little things make you wish for a plan text editor. Maybe the new version 4 is better but seeing that 3 was a minor improvement in usability versus 2... I doubt it .
I am looking for a feature driven IDE for the Propeller, not speed.
I sometimes wonder if any IDE is perfect.
Right now I'm in the process of hybridising Catalina C and Propeller object code. Why? Well, so I can put the program itself into external 512k memory and hence free up 30k of hub ram for clever video processing. And the ability to load and reload cogs on the fly from within code.
A crazy project I know!
Code::Blocks is fine but it can't hybridise PASM and C. And Big Spin is beyond any of us while bits of the compiler and interpreter remain secret.
Just as an example, this subroutine highlights the keywords in the code, highlights quotes, and changes the color of CON and PUB and DAT code. There is other code that binds the two together.
When writing code, I spend about half the time writing code and half the time editing the IDE. Not perfect by any means but it does look pretty. And it compiles with one keypress.
VB.NET may have its disadvantages, but large parts of this code were copied from C help forums, not Basic ones. Yet this is Basic code. There appears to be an convergence of Basic/C/Java within vb.net, and while as a Basic programmer I'm being dragged kicking and screaming through this process, I can see that it is heading towards a common language that is going to be better than all three of these languages [insert waving red flag *grin*]
I'm using vb.net to help me program in C, and sometimes I wonder if it would almost be easier to do it wholly in C. Or Java.
Maybe we could all contribute to a new IDE?
Private Sub ColorCatalina()
Dim Greenwords As New List(Of String)
Dim Bluewords As New List(Of String)
Dim Goldwords As New List(Of String) ' syntax errors
Dim Purplewords As New List(Of String)
Dim i, q As Integer
Dim NumberLines As Integer
Dim StartLine As Integer
Dim EndLine As Integer
Dim LineOfText As String
Dim GreenFlag, PASMflag, CommentBlockflag, Quoteflag As Boolean
Dim CurrentColor As New Color
Dim CommentMarker As Integer
Dim QuoteMarker As Integer
GreenFlag = False
CommentBlockflag = False
' http://condor.depaul.edu/sjost/it236/documents/colorNames.htm
' purple words
Purplewords.Add("FILE")
'Goldwords.Add(" as ") ' should use =
' blue words
Bluewords.Add("char ")
Bluewords.Add("do")
Bluewords.Add("#define")
Bluewords.Add("else")
Bluewords.Add("for ")
Bluewords.Add("fopen")
Bluewords.Add("fclose")
Bluewords.Add("fread")
Bluewords.Add("fwrite")
Bluewords.Add("fputc")
Bluewords.Add("fgetc")
Bluewords.Add("fprintf")
Bluewords.Add("getchar")
Bluewords.Add("int ")
Bluewords.Add("if")
Bluewords.Add("#include")
Bluewords.Add("kbhit")
Bluewords.Add("printf")
Bluewords.Add("return")
Bluewords.Add("srand")
Bluewords.Add("void")
Bluewords.Add("unsigned")
Bluewords.Add("while")
Bluewords.Add("_coginit")
Bluewords.Add("long")
Bluewords.Add("const")
SendMessage(RichTextBox1.Handle, WM_SETREDRAW, New IntPtr(CInt(False)), IntPtr.Zero) ' disable refresh
Dim selectStart As Integer = RichTextBox1.SelectionStart ' preserve cursor
RichTextBox1.Select(0, RichTextBox1.Text.Length)
RichTextBox1.SelectionColor = Color.Black ' all text to black
RichTextBox1.DeselectAll()
NumberLines = RichTextBox1.Lines.Length
CurrentColor = Color.Black
'do blue words
For Each oneWord As String In Bluewords
Dim pos As Integer = 0
Do While RichTextBox1.Text.ToUpper.IndexOf(oneWord.ToUpper, pos) >= 0
pos = RichTextBox1.Text.ToUpper.IndexOf(oneWord.ToUpper, pos)
RichTextBox1.Select(pos, oneWord.Length)
RichTextBox1.SelectionColor = Color.Blue ' change the foreground color
'RichTextBox1.SelectionBackColor = Color.Black ' change the background color
pos = pos + 1
Loop
Next
Label3.Text = "Start purple"
System.Windows.Forms.Application.DoEvents() ' update the label
'do purple words (syntax errors eg using as instead of = because vb.net uses as
For Each oneWord As String In Purplewords
Dim pos As Integer = 0
Do While RichTextBox1.Text.ToUpper.IndexOf(oneWord.ToUpper, pos) >= 0
pos = RichTextBox1.Text.ToUpper.IndexOf(oneWord.ToUpper, pos)
RichTextBox1.Select(pos, oneWord.Length)
RichTextBox1.SelectionColor = Color.Purple
pos = pos + 1
Loop
Next
System.Windows.Forms.Application.DoEvents() ' update the richtextbox
For i = 0 To NumberLines - 1
LineOfText = RichTextBox1.Lines(i)
If Strings.InStr(LineOfText, "/*") <> 0 Then
CommentBlockflag = True ' start of comment block
End If
If CommentBlockflag = True Then ' block of comments
StartLine = RichTextBox1.GetFirstCharIndexFromLine(i) ' start of the line
EndLine = RichTextBox1.GetFirstCharIndexFromLine(i + 1) ' end of the line
RichTextBox1.Select(StartLine, EndLine - StartLine)
RichTextBox1.SelectionColor = Color.Green
End If
If Strings.Left(LineOfText, 10) = "PASM Start" Then
PASMflag = True
CurrentColor = Color.Green ' still in the comment section
End If
If Strings.Left(LineOfText, 8) = "PASM End" Then
PASMflag = False
CurrentColor = Color.Green ' still in the comment section
End If
If PASMflag = True And Strings.Left(LineOfText, 3) = "CON" Then
CurrentColor = Color.Goldenrod
End If
If PASMflag = True And Strings.Left(LineOfText, 3) = "PUB" Then
CurrentColor = Color.Firebrick
End If
If PASMflag = True And Strings.Left(LineOfText, 3) = "DAT" Then
CurrentColor = Color.DarkSlateBlue
End If
If PASMflag = True Then
StartLine = RichTextBox1.GetFirstCharIndexFromLine(i) ' start of the line
EndLine = RichTextBox1.GetFirstCharIndexFromLine(i + 1) ' end of the line
RichTextBox1.Select(StartLine, EndLine - StartLine)
RichTextBox1.SelectionColor = CurrentColor
End If
' do text in quotes as red
QuoteMarker = Strings.InStr(LineOfText, Strings.Chr(34)) ' look for "
If QuoteMarker <> 0 Then
StartLine = RichTextBox1.GetFirstCharIndexFromLine(i) ' start of the line
EndLine = RichTextBox1.GetFirstCharIndexFromLine(i + 1) ' end of the line
For q = 1 To Strings.Len(LineOfText)
If Strings.Mid(LineOfText, q, 1) = Strings.Chr(34) Then
If Quoteflag = True Then Quoteflag = False Else Quoteflag = True ' start turning text red
End If
If Quoteflag = True Then
RichTextBox1.Select(StartLine + q - 1, 2) 'include the second quote
RichTextBox1.SelectionColor = Color.Red
End If
Next
End If
CommentMarker = Strings.InStr(LineOfText, "'") ' search for '
If CommentMarker <> 0 Then
StartLine = RichTextBox1.GetFirstCharIndexFromLine(i) ' start of the line
EndLine = RichTextBox1.GetFirstCharIndexFromLine(i + 1) ' end of the line
'RichTextBox1.Select(StartLine, CommentMarker - 1) ' text before the comment in the default color
'RichTextBox1.SelectionColor = CurrentColor ' this can change depending on the line, usually black
RichTextBox1.Select(StartLine + CommentMarker - 1, EndLine - StartLine - CommentMarker) ' comment in green
RichTextBox1.SelectionColor = Color.Green
End If
CommentMarker = Strings.InStr(LineOfText, "//") ' search for //
If CommentMarker <> 0 Then
StartLine = RichTextBox1.GetFirstCharIndexFromLine(i) ' start of the line
EndLine = RichTextBox1.GetFirstCharIndexFromLine(i + 1) ' end of the line
'RichTextBox1.Select(StartLine, CommentMarker - 1) ' text before the comment in the default color
'RichTextBox1.SelectionColor = CurrentColor ' this can change depending on the line, usually black
RichTextBox1.Select(StartLine + CommentMarker - 1, EndLine - StartLine - CommentMarker) ' comment in green
RichTextBox1.SelectionColor = Color.Green
End If
If Strings.InStr(LineOfText, "*/") <> 0 Then
CommentBlockflag = False
End If
Next
RichTextBox1.SelectionStart = selectStart ' restore cursor
RichTextBox1.SelectionLength = 0
SendMessage(RichTextBox1.Handle, WM_SETREDRAW, New IntPtr(CInt(True)), IntPtr.Zero) ' restore cursor
RichTextBox1.Refresh()
End Sub
Comments
PM sent.
I started using Eclipse after I volunteered to work with a FIRST team. A few mentors ported Microchip’s MPLAB C18 to Eclipse, now the FIRSTies (our future engineers) use the Wind River Workbench subversion of Eclipse. Eclipse plug-ins have been created to support professionals, students and hobbyists for ARM, AVR & Arduino’s, and all MPLAB tool chains. I have seen additional plug-ins available for an enormous variety of languages including versions of Microsoft Assembler and Basic.
http://www.usfirst.org/default.aspx
http://www.windriver.com/products/workbench/
http://avr-eclipse.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/The_AVR_Eclipse_Plugin
http://marketplace.eclipse.org/
Three of Eclipse’s simple features that I appreciated were the differences in how it handled its file directory compared to Visual Studio 2008. Another was being able to freely make templates of any kind to drop in place where ever I needed it. Dragging and dropping any portion of the workbench and docking it to my second monitor. These are simple features, but they served me well when I took my first C++ course, while the class used Visual Studio.
By creating a Master IDE with Eclipse, we would be encouraging professionals, students, and other hobbyists that are already using Eclipse to download the Parallax product plug-ins to their familiar IDE; opposed to downloading a different IDE for every Parallax product, sub-language, and customer created tools.
A support forum could be created to encourage plug-in development. There has been many posts supporting this general idea for some time now, but somebody always has a problem with any possible answer. Despite this, Eclipse is still supported better than any other open source IDE I know of, and it is far more likely that, anybody wanting to tackle such a project would be able to “get up to speed” easier with Eclipse and its mature support base. This is sample of my links on Eclipse, enjoy.
Improve the usability of your Eclipse-based apps
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-eclipse-ua/
PDE Does Plug-ins
http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-PDE-does-plugins/PDE-intro.html
What to plug into Eclipse, a Universal IDE
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-ecl-what/index.html
Developing the Eclipse "Hello World" plug-in
http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Your%20First%20Plug-in/YourFirstPlugin.html
Notes on the Eclipse Plug-in Architecture
http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Plug-in-architecture/plugin_architecture.html
Plug-in development 101, Part 1: The basics of Eclipse plug-in development.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-eclipse-plugindev1/index.html
Plug-in development 101, Part 2: Learning the basics about plug-in development and rich-client applications
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-eclipse-plugindev2/index.html
Workbench User Guide & Platform Plug-in Developer Guide
http://help.eclipse.org/helios/index.jsp?topic=/org.eclipse.help.webapp/advanced/banner.html
Create an Eclipse-based application using the Graphical Editing Framework
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-eclipse-gef11/index.html?S_TACT=105AGX44&S_CMP=EDU
Use Eclipse for debugging your software projects
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-ecbug/index.html?S_TACT=105AGX44&S_CMP=EDU
How to write an Eclipse debugger
http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Debugger/how-to.html
Build extensions for Eclipse one snippet at a time
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-eclipse-snippet/index.html?ca=dgr-lnxw16RichEclipse
Eclipse Community Forums
http://www.eclipse.org/forums/
The CDT Project provides a fully functional C and C++ Integrated Development Environment based on the Eclipse platform
http://www.eclipse.org/cdt/
Eclipse is a collection of open source projects
http://www.eclipse.org/projects/
Create a commercial-quality IDEs that plug into Eclipse IDE, Part 1: The core
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/tutorials/os-ecl-commplgin1/index.html
Create a commercial-quality IDEs that plug into Eclipse IDE, Part 2: The user interface
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/tutorials/os-ecl-commplgin2/index.html
Create a commercial-quality IDEs that plug into Eclipse IDE, Part 3: Fine-tune the UI
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/tutorials/os-ecl-commplgin3/index.html
Building a CDT-based editor, Part 1: The C/C++ Development Tooling model
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-ecl-cdt1/index.html
Building a CDT-based editor, Part 2: Highlighting source code with syntax styling
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-ecl-cdt2/index.html
Building a CDT-based editor, Part 3: Basic CDT parsing
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-ecl-cdt3/index.html
Building a CDT-based editor, Part 4: Advanced CDT parsing and the Persisted Document Object Model
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-ecl-cdt4/index.html
Building a CDT-based editor, Part 5: Using the PDOM for code completion
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-ecl-cdt5/index.html
Eclipse IDE project resources
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/top-projects/eclipse/index.html
Developing applications using the Eclipse C/C++ Development Toolkit
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-eclipse-stlcdt/index.html?S_TACT=105AGX44&S_CMP=EDU
Interfacing with the CDT debugger, Part 1: Understand the C/C++ debugger interface
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/os-eclipse-cdt-debug1/index.html?S_TACT=105AGX44&S_CMP=EDU
Interfacing with the CDT debugger, Part 2: Accessing gdb with the Eclipse CDT and MI
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-eclipse-cdt-debug2/
Web page dealing with building the AVR plug-in
http://avr-eclipse.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Building_the_Plugin
Simplified Robot Controller Programming with the C18 plug-in
http://users.wpi.edu/~bamiller/WPILib/
Using Eclipse IDE & makefile as MPLAB replacement
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35571
The classic Eclipse download: the Eclipse Platform, Java Development Tools, and Plug-in Development Environment, including source and both user and programmer documentation
http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/
I've worked a couple of big names that used Eclipse. One thing is, somebody has "be in charge". I vote Capt.Quirk be the leader on this, as he has the most familiarity on how to use it.
What does Eclipse need? There are an awful lots of links in this post alone, what does a person have to do to get Eclipse set up for use with the prop?
The Plug-ins for C18 were not very big, and they worked great. I have used the Cheat Sheets in the PDE a few times, and they seem to make the task easy. But I don't understand much of the terminology. That is why I gathered all those links (and those are just a few of them). I need to read more of my links now that I have some spare time again.
One of the features of Eclipse was to automatically seek and acquire a compiler, so long as it knows it exists.
Concerning Spin, I know nothing about dll's or api's. Until today I always thought PASM was part of Propellant? Parallax also provides the Basic Stamp Tokenizer. It was my thought that people with real programming experience, and good documentation would know how to integrate them into Eclipse plug-ins or rich-client application.
(Prof_Braino), The pictures document the Eclipse cheat sheet process for building a plug-in. After downloading the Classic Eclipse, set the workspace to the "Plug In Device" perspective, then->Help Menu->Cheat Sheets
Interestingly, Microchip themselves has chosen the NetBeans IDE for their new MPLAB-X IDE. It has many advantages over Eclipse.
Leon
Curious - what are the advantages? - I have always heard the opposite and there are many more people using eclipse than NetBeans.
Using NetBeans with Schliemann, one can even define one's own language:
http://wiki.netbeans.org/Schliemann
and add support for it to the IDE. That might be useful in a Propeller context.
Having used it for some time, and having used Eclipse a lot as well, I'm quite sure that they made the right choice.
My favourite IDE is Rowley CrossStudio, used with their ARM, MSP430 and AVR tools. That is written in C++ and is very slick compared to both Eclipse and NetBeans, which are written in Java.
-Phil
Seriously, when I first used Eclipse some years ago I found it was so slow that it was unusable. On current hardware, it is still a bit sluggish, as is NetBeans, but they are usable. OpenOffice is slow compared to MS Office, but I use it (under Windows) because it's free. It runs quite well on the hardware I have.
I now vote that Capt Quirk AND Yoda lead the Eclipse effort, as Yoda knows what the hard parts are.
I further vote that Leon be lead on the NetBeans effort, as he has extensive experience on NetBean and Schliemann which could be the deciding factor if it gives a huge benefit in setting up the Prop's language items.
Also, he will be in the best position to explain the advantages and disadvatages of both the Eclipse and NetBeans options.
Ideally, we should be able to tell which options makes the best progress in the shortest amount of time and effort. But this decision will likely need expertise that the average prop tinkerer (i.e. me) does not have.
Is there anybody else that uses NetBeans that can share the load?
I found Eclipse to startup slow, but after that it's fine except for running and terminating a program. I've used NetBeans more over the last few years and have enjoyed it mostly. I never tried to use it with anything except Java though. I've used Eclipse with C and compared to the Java "profile" it s*cks.
So, I guess I would vote for NetBeans. I'm not interested in developing any of this though since I already have plenty to do. Good luck.
http://www.codeblocks.org/
I tried it with gcc for a simple Windows console application before Christmas, and was impressed with the user interface and the facilities provided.
It's written in C++, is cross-platform, and is very fast. It only works with C/C++ code, though.
I had problems with Eclipse initially, but the good features out weighed the negatives. With a little work, and Wascana, all the pieces came together.
For those who want a better C/C++ sub-version, try this one http://sourceforge.net/projects/wascana/
Also I vote Prof_Braino to be the supreme leader of this effort
I sometimes wonder if any IDE is perfect.
Right now I'm in the process of hybridising Catalina C and Propeller object code. Why? Well, so I can put the program itself into external 512k memory and hence free up 30k of hub ram for clever video processing. And the ability to load and reload cogs on the fly from within code.
A crazy project I know!
Code::Blocks is fine but it can't hybridise PASM and C. And Big Spin is beyond any of us while bits of the compiler and interpreter remain secret.
Just as an example, this subroutine highlights the keywords in the code, highlights quotes, and changes the color of CON and PUB and DAT code. There is other code that binds the two together.
When writing code, I spend about half the time writing code and half the time editing the IDE. Not perfect by any means but it does look pretty. And it compiles with one keypress.
VB.NET may have its disadvantages, but large parts of this code were copied from C help forums, not Basic ones. Yet this is Basic code. There appears to be an convergence of Basic/C/Java within vb.net, and while as a Basic programmer I'm being dragged kicking and screaming through this process, I can see that it is heading towards a common language that is going to be better than all three of these languages [insert waving red flag *grin*]
I'm using vb.net to help me program in C, and sometimes I wonder if it would almost be easier to do it wholly in C. Or Java.
Maybe we could all contribute to a new IDE?
Private Sub ColorCatalina() Dim Greenwords As New List(Of String) Dim Bluewords As New List(Of String) Dim Goldwords As New List(Of String) ' syntax errors Dim Purplewords As New List(Of String) Dim i, q As Integer Dim NumberLines As Integer Dim StartLine As Integer Dim EndLine As Integer Dim LineOfText As String Dim GreenFlag, PASMflag, CommentBlockflag, Quoteflag As Boolean Dim CurrentColor As New Color Dim CommentMarker As Integer Dim QuoteMarker As Integer GreenFlag = False CommentBlockflag = False ' http://condor.depaul.edu/sjost/it236/documents/colorNames.htm ' purple words Purplewords.Add("FILE") 'Goldwords.Add(" as ") ' should use = ' blue words Bluewords.Add("char ") Bluewords.Add("do") Bluewords.Add("#define") Bluewords.Add("else") Bluewords.Add("for ") Bluewords.Add("fopen") Bluewords.Add("fclose") Bluewords.Add("fread") Bluewords.Add("fwrite") Bluewords.Add("fputc") Bluewords.Add("fgetc") Bluewords.Add("fprintf") Bluewords.Add("getchar") Bluewords.Add("int ") Bluewords.Add("if") Bluewords.Add("#include") Bluewords.Add("kbhit") Bluewords.Add("printf") Bluewords.Add("return") Bluewords.Add("srand") Bluewords.Add("void") Bluewords.Add("unsigned") Bluewords.Add("while") Bluewords.Add("_coginit") Bluewords.Add("long") Bluewords.Add("const") SendMessage(RichTextBox1.Handle, WM_SETREDRAW, New IntPtr(CInt(False)), IntPtr.Zero) ' disable refresh Dim selectStart As Integer = RichTextBox1.SelectionStart ' preserve cursor RichTextBox1.Select(0, RichTextBox1.Text.Length) RichTextBox1.SelectionColor = Color.Black ' all text to black RichTextBox1.DeselectAll() NumberLines = RichTextBox1.Lines.Length CurrentColor = Color.Black 'do blue words For Each oneWord As String In Bluewords Dim pos As Integer = 0 Do While RichTextBox1.Text.ToUpper.IndexOf(oneWord.ToUpper, pos) >= 0 pos = RichTextBox1.Text.ToUpper.IndexOf(oneWord.ToUpper, pos) RichTextBox1.Select(pos, oneWord.Length) RichTextBox1.SelectionColor = Color.Blue ' change the foreground color 'RichTextBox1.SelectionBackColor = Color.Black ' change the background color pos = pos + 1 Loop Next Label3.Text = "Start purple" System.Windows.Forms.Application.DoEvents() ' update the label 'do purple words (syntax errors eg using as instead of = because vb.net uses as For Each oneWord As String In Purplewords Dim pos As Integer = 0 Do While RichTextBox1.Text.ToUpper.IndexOf(oneWord.ToUpper, pos) >= 0 pos = RichTextBox1.Text.ToUpper.IndexOf(oneWord.ToUpper, pos) RichTextBox1.Select(pos, oneWord.Length) RichTextBox1.SelectionColor = Color.Purple pos = pos + 1 Loop Next System.Windows.Forms.Application.DoEvents() ' update the richtextbox For i = 0 To NumberLines - 1 LineOfText = RichTextBox1.Lines(i) If Strings.InStr(LineOfText, "/*") <> 0 Then CommentBlockflag = True ' start of comment block End If If CommentBlockflag = True Then ' block of comments StartLine = RichTextBox1.GetFirstCharIndexFromLine(i) ' start of the line EndLine = RichTextBox1.GetFirstCharIndexFromLine(i + 1) ' end of the line RichTextBox1.Select(StartLine, EndLine - StartLine) RichTextBox1.SelectionColor = Color.Green End If If Strings.Left(LineOfText, 10) = "PASM Start" Then PASMflag = True CurrentColor = Color.Green ' still in the comment section End If If Strings.Left(LineOfText, 8) = "PASM End" Then PASMflag = False CurrentColor = Color.Green ' still in the comment section End If If PASMflag = True And Strings.Left(LineOfText, 3) = "CON" Then CurrentColor = Color.Goldenrod End If If PASMflag = True And Strings.Left(LineOfText, 3) = "PUB" Then CurrentColor = Color.Firebrick End If If PASMflag = True And Strings.Left(LineOfText, 3) = "DAT" Then CurrentColor = Color.DarkSlateBlue End If If PASMflag = True Then StartLine = RichTextBox1.GetFirstCharIndexFromLine(i) ' start of the line EndLine = RichTextBox1.GetFirstCharIndexFromLine(i + 1) ' end of the line RichTextBox1.Select(StartLine, EndLine - StartLine) RichTextBox1.SelectionColor = CurrentColor End If ' do text in quotes as red QuoteMarker = Strings.InStr(LineOfText, Strings.Chr(34)) ' look for " If QuoteMarker <> 0 Then StartLine = RichTextBox1.GetFirstCharIndexFromLine(i) ' start of the line EndLine = RichTextBox1.GetFirstCharIndexFromLine(i + 1) ' end of the line For q = 1 To Strings.Len(LineOfText) If Strings.Mid(LineOfText, q, 1) = Strings.Chr(34) Then If Quoteflag = True Then Quoteflag = False Else Quoteflag = True ' start turning text red End If If Quoteflag = True Then RichTextBox1.Select(StartLine + q - 1, 2) 'include the second quote RichTextBox1.SelectionColor = Color.Red End If Next End If CommentMarker = Strings.InStr(LineOfText, "'") ' search for ' If CommentMarker <> 0 Then StartLine = RichTextBox1.GetFirstCharIndexFromLine(i) ' start of the line EndLine = RichTextBox1.GetFirstCharIndexFromLine(i + 1) ' end of the line 'RichTextBox1.Select(StartLine, CommentMarker - 1) ' text before the comment in the default color 'RichTextBox1.SelectionColor = CurrentColor ' this can change depending on the line, usually black RichTextBox1.Select(StartLine + CommentMarker - 1, EndLine - StartLine - CommentMarker) ' comment in green RichTextBox1.SelectionColor = Color.Green End If CommentMarker = Strings.InStr(LineOfText, "//") ' search for // If CommentMarker <> 0 Then StartLine = RichTextBox1.GetFirstCharIndexFromLine(i) ' start of the line EndLine = RichTextBox1.GetFirstCharIndexFromLine(i + 1) ' end of the line 'RichTextBox1.Select(StartLine, CommentMarker - 1) ' text before the comment in the default color 'RichTextBox1.SelectionColor = CurrentColor ' this can change depending on the line, usually black RichTextBox1.Select(StartLine + CommentMarker - 1, EndLine - StartLine - CommentMarker) ' comment in green RichTextBox1.SelectionColor = Color.Green End If If Strings.InStr(LineOfText, "*/") <> 0 Then CommentBlockflag = False End If Next RichTextBox1.SelectionStart = selectStart ' restore cursor RichTextBox1.SelectionLength = 0 SendMessage(RichTextBox1.Handle, WM_SETREDRAW, New IntPtr(CInt(True)), IntPtr.Zero) ' restore cursor RichTextBox1.Refresh() End Sub