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eclipse for prop? — Parallax Forums

eclipse for prop?

rwgast_logicdesignrwgast_logicdesign Posts: 1,464
edited 2012-11-21 09:02 in Propeller 1
So after a lengthy thread about programming languages in the Genral Discussion forums, i went out and played with a few development tools and im really impressed with how easy Processing is, im also liking PyQt. Basically i want to find an IDE that can handel all of my programming tools im sick of having 10 IDEs installed. so heres a list of languages/tools/compilers i use frequently

msvc6 or gcc
java
python
prop tool
simple ide / propgcc
avr studio
processing
arduino
keil arm or arm gcc
nasm

now im looking into just dropping these all into eclipse from what i can tell almost everything in that list has eclipse plug ins. the ones im not sure about yet is keil, nasm and the prop stuff...

keil and nasm arent show stoppers for me but im really needing propeller tools to work. i see no reason progcc wont work, has someone used eclipse with propgcc? i havent acually used eclipse much but am willing too learn it if i can intergrate all my compilers into it. im really wondering if theres a nice solution to get bst or one of the open source or spin/pasm compilers running with nice eclipse syntax features, if not maybe an eclipse user can tell me how hard it would be to get a full fledged spin plug in made

Comments

  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2012-11-19 02:06
    I agree, Having an IDE for every combination of languages and target platforms sometimes starts to drive me nuts. Every one operating a little differently with different short cut keys and menus and editor features and so on.
    On the other hand Eclipse is a nightmare. IT tries to do everything, is huge and complicated and slow and never does what I want. I guess in theory one can load it up with plugins and jump from language to language and platform to platform at will but that is not how it works out:
    I have an Eclipse installation for C and XC languages on XMOS devices.
    I have an Eclipse installation for Android.
    I have an Eclipse installation for C++/Qt on Android.
    I have an Eclipse installation for the Go language.
    ...
    Every one of those set up with whatever plugins in requires for the use case. All of them big and sprawling and slow and confusing.

    I believe someone has used Eclipse with propgcc and a proper plugin set up was on the plans at one point.

    In all this IDE mess I keep finding myself falling back to vim and the command line just so I have an island of stability and know where I am:)
  • rwgast_logicdesignrwgast_logicdesign Posts: 1,464
    edited 2012-11-19 06:16
    so you you have seperate eclipse installations for each compiler, ive managed to get eclipse up and running on linux for both C and Java/Android.

    btw i meant IARwarm not keil, never used keil in my life.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2012-11-19 06:45
    When I looked into XMOS I downloaded their dev tools, Eclipse based. That installs me one copy of Eclipse customized for XMOS devices.
    A while back I looked at Android and followed their SDK install instructions, That gets me another Eclipse.
    Pretty sure I ended up with a third one for Qt on Android.

    Recently I In stalled Eclipse again for the Go language. This time on a machine that had never see Eclipse before. Now perhaps I'm missing a point but:
    1) Why do I have a bunch of Java related buttons and menu options when I am in Go mode?
    2) Why when I press the RUN button does it come up with all kinds of reasons to not actually run anything?
    3) Why is it so slow? Admittedly on an old XP machine I borrowed at the time.
    4) Why is it so hard to keep all those stupid windows in place?

    Go might be a special case because it compiles so damn fast and has a very neat and simple build system, all I need is:
    $ go run myprog.go
    On the command line and it will build that module and all its dependencies in the wink of an eye.
    Given that the build can be done in less time than Eclipse to takes to even start it it's very frustrating to use Eclipse.
  • KyeKye Posts: 2,200
    edited 2012-11-19 15:02
    If you are using propGCC, then setting up eclipse is really easy.

    The thing to understand however, is that eclipse doesn't do anything but be an editor, you have to supply the make file it will execute for you.

    Um, to get eclipse working for propGCC, just create a new C/C++ project and then edit the project settings to target the make file for the project. It will be a little bit confusing at first, but there should a "build" option or something of the like where you can specify the command to build your code.
  • rod1963rod1963 Posts: 752
    edited 2012-11-19 20:53
    Why does anyone want to Eclipse if they aren't forced to? It's bloatware, and probably malevolent.

    And fer heaven sakes Spin has no business associating with the red light district of development.
  • jazzedjazzed Posts: 11,803
    edited 2012-11-19 22:46
    Heater. wrote: »
    When I looked into XMOS I downloaded their dev tools, Eclipse based. That installs me one copy of Eclipse customized for XMOS devices.
    A while back I looked at Android and followed their SDK install instructions, That gets me another Eclipse.
    Pretty sure I ended up with a third one for Qt on Android.

    Amazing story. I would just stick with VIM if at all possible - except that I'm in this other development thingy .... :)
  • YodaYoda Posts: 132
    edited 2012-11-20 06:50
    It seems to me that your real problem is that you have chosen vendors that have not integrated well with Eclipse not a problem with Eclipse A good implementation would allow you to install their plugins into an existing Eclipse install. I use Eclipse quite a bit and have a single installation that supports python (PyDev), C/C++ with multiple compile targets (CDT) and java. Modern tools tend to want modern platforms also - Eclipse is quite snappy on a modern machine and I have no problems with its performance. While Eclipse may be overkill for small projects like propGCC it is definitely about the only thing in town for large (multi thousand file / class) projects. I don't think it is fair to bash eclipse when you have not spent the time to properly set it up as a real development environment. I don't really want to get into a religious war as development environments are just like editors - everyone has their own favorite.
  • rwgast_logicdesignrwgast_logicdesign Posts: 1,464
    edited 2012-11-20 07:41
    ok so for you guys that acually use eclipse how hard would it be to write a spin plugin that can do syntax highlighting, white space checking and compile/run for the prop.

    eclipse is overkill for small micro projects but its not overkill if your trying to use 1 ide for everything
  • KyeKye Posts: 2,200
    edited 2012-11-20 08:02
    For SPIN? I would say that would be hard...
  • rwgast_logicdesignrwgast_logicdesign Posts: 1,464
    edited 2012-11-20 11:51
    well how do eclipse plug ins work any way, is it a scripting language or do you have to write them is C or java or something using an api? Im not even sure if i really want to run eclipse on the pc i have at the moment, AVR studio based on visual studios IDE is quite taxing so i can imagine eclipse would be also. Im almost tempted to learn lisp and just write a bunch of crazy emacs add ons or something. I just cant sand all these IDEs anymore, right now my main pc is a p4 3.2ghz with 1gb of ram, I had to sell my quad core extreme with 1gb a while back and now im on this thing. I acually dont mind it so much but my issue is the more dev tools I put on it the slower the thing gets, every IDE wants to add 5 services to windows start up it really erks me. The logical step is just to buy more ram but im also a neat freak I keep good back ups and format once every 2 or 3 months becuase I cant stand clutter. If I could get this one IDE for all system working it would just make me feel more at peace with life :)
  • YodaYoda Posts: 132
    edited 2012-11-21 09:02
    rwgast_logicdesign wrote: »
    well how do eclipse plug ins work any way, is it a scripting language or do you have to write them is C or java or something using an api? Im not even sure if i really want to run eclipse on the pc i have at the moment, AVR studio based on visual studios IDE is quite taxing so i can imagine eclipse would be also. Im almost tempted to learn lisp and just write a bunch of crazy emacs add ons or something. I just cant sand all these IDEs anymore, right now my main pc is a p4 3.2ghz with 1gb of ram, I had to sell my quad core extreme with 1gb a while back and now im on this thing. I acually dont mind it so much but my issue is the more dev tools I put on it the slower the thing gets, every IDE wants to add 5 services to windows start up it really erks me. The logical step is just to buy more ram but im also a neat freak I keep good back ups and format once every 2 or 3 months becuase I cant stand clutter. If I could get this one IDE for all system working it would just make me feel more at peace with life :)

    Unfortunately it is pretty difficult to write a good language plugin set for eclipse. There is a framework for writing one and you must "plugin or extend" this framework. You would have to build a language grammar parser first and there are other pieces. I would look at the source to PyDev on pydev.org I believe - you can see the amount of work required. Python structure is similar to Spin and PyDev implementation is pretty good as a language plugin so it would be a good model to start with.
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