PropellerIDE 0.25.0 Released - Now with themes!
Brett Weir
Posts: 288
Hello all!
I've released a brand spanking new version of PropellerIDE for you. This version of the editor includes a brand new theming system that allows you to change the editor's look and feel to your heart's content. It comes with several presets to choose from, but you can customize them however you like.
Some examples: The Classic theme uses a modified Parallax font that scales nicely and works well with Unicode. In addition, there's a few new keyboard shortcuts and menu options, a new command-line parser, and the datasheet/manual links now work on all platforms.
Download for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Raspberry Pi on the PropellerIDE home page!
Read all about the changes on the PropellerIDE 0.25.0 release page!
Hope you like it!
UPDATE:
0.25.1 released with loader path fix.
I've released a brand spanking new version of PropellerIDE for you. This version of the editor includes a brand new theming system that allows you to change the editor's look and feel to your heart's content. It comes with several presets to choose from, but you can customize them however you like.
Some examples: The Classic theme uses a modified Parallax font that scales nicely and works well with Unicode. In addition, there's a few new keyboard shortcuts and menu options, a new command-line parser, and the datasheet/manual links now work on all platforms.
Download for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Raspberry Pi on the PropellerIDE home page!
Read all about the changes on the PropellerIDE 0.25.0 release page!
Hope you like it!
UPDATE:
0.25.1 released with loader path fix.
Comments
This is a false alarm, but it's an irritating one that needs a workaround. Probably unbundling the FTDI driver, although it's then an extra step to locate it.
That said, the way FTDI go about their business... Their drivers basically are viruses! /burn
Not to be too picky, but should't the Preferences path fields be a little bit wider? I like being able to see as much of the paths as possible without needing to scroll, extremely left or right. Could you make these wider?
Oh, and congratulations on your work, it's looking great!
Thanks,
dgately
I noticed the timing has been changed and the problem of detecting Propeller's when using CP210x USB bridges appears to be Ok now.
The problem I'm having now is I can't get the loader to start.
in preferences I have the following path/file set
IBTW 'm using Windows 8.1.
Am I missing something?
Cheers
Brian
Ahh, yes, this has been an ongoing problem. Some combination of packaging the new FTDI driver inside the executable using Inno Setup 5 on Windows 8 has caused the PropellerIDE executable to be flagged by Avira and Avast (this is the first I've seen it on Norton). I've tested on about 4 or 5 different installations so far with the same results every time. Two remote Amazon EC2 Windows instances, on a local VM, and on a native installation. Scanning each of the components by themselves results in no errors, scanning the project results in no errors, I submitted the driver by itself to virustotal.com with no complaints. It's only when the FTDI driver is packaged within the installer that antivirus starts complaining, and I'm at a loss as to why. I've submitted several false positive reports to Avira and Avast with no response from them. I have also wondered if the results would be the same if I packaged PropellerIDE with NSIS instead of Inno Setup, but I haven't looked into it yet.
I think to prevent more scary messages, I'm just going to remove the driver from the installer for good.
Hmm. I've been refactoring PropellerIDE to use native paths internally so that I can use Qt's built-in path libraries, and I must have flubbed a couple spots in the actual build code. I'll make a patch build tonight that will resolve this.
Ah, how frustrating! Qt uses different style policies to comply with Mac style guides. I'll see about using a different policy for this widget on Mac.
One more Qt on Mac glitch:
The Themes Combo-box is corrupted a bit with horizontal lines...
Thanks,
dgately
Huh, that's a little strange. What version of Mac OS X are you using? I have that dialog open on 10.9.5 and it looks the way it should.
10.10.1...
dgately
1. Like others have said the loader is not working
2. The file history is not remembered
3. It no longer automatically opens the last file you where working on when starting up
4. It looses the theme settings if you use the file exit menu
Hmm... that's very odd. Well, I'm going to be upgraded to the new OS X soon, so I'll let you know if I see anything when I do. If you'd like to know sooner, you can try making the build yourself and letting me know what you find.
2 & 4 are related problems. There's some logic to remove the old configuration file if a new application version is installed, but it behaves differently on Windows than other platforms. It might be best to simply remove that, as the file can still be manually cleared if it causes problems, which is what the logic was for in the first place.
As for 3: internally, this release represents a large-scale refactoring of how PropellerIDE manages files and preferences to improve overall application maintainability. The new features like themes and tab controls are what you might think of as side effects of this effort. But another side effect is that during this process, some features had to be removed from the project that were poorly implemented and unable to be used as is.
In the case of this feature, my current plans are to implement session saving and reopening, so you'll be able to reopen all of your tabs. This will be considerably easier to do now that there's a single FileManager class managing the interaction between the editor tabs and the rest of the application.
As such, this release is a snapshot, and a great deal more work is required to fully realize this project to the level that I require for the LameStation project.
EDIT: I cleared out my unused COM ports, and now the Prop board connects on COM5. However the loader still fails, so the COM port number isn't the problem.
Suffice to say, a lot of "under the hood" refactoring has gone into this version of PropellerIDE, which you can get a feel for by viewing the GitHub commits. This refactoring means that some features basically have to be re-written from scratch to get them back to their previous state. So, the short term solution has been to simply remove them while everything else is fixed.
I think we're in for a bit of a ride as PropellerIDE is bashed into shape and made fit for another decade of Propeller-programming awesomeness, but on the plus side this is the time to have your say about features/improvements.
As for the loader- I really hope to see a shiny new replacement for that this year, too. The current solution(s) work, but they're fragmented, poorly documented and not without their problems. Watch this space!
Sit tight!
So I would much appreciate the addition of live (when mouse is hovering over a label) display of its Cog Address, its Object Address and its Hub Address. And in the case where the label is a constant, its value.
The first two of these are available in the SpinTool, although not live with hovering, and are of immense assistance when debugging assembler code. The latter two would be a nice improvement.
Thanks, and
Cheers,
Peter (pjv)
What the issue actually was is that I had moved some code around and had a problem with passing the wrong path separators to the loader. It's fixed in my branch in the following commit if anyone is interested in building it before I make another release: https://github.com/bweir/PropellerIDE/commit/5442b0349eb42078487c96239f0b7e00a292be81
Oh, haha, I just saw your latest post. Looks like you had already figured that out. =P
Hi David, I've tried writing this message a couple of times and lost them due to technical difficulties, so let's try again! =P
PropellerIDE is using an orphaned version of p1load that lives within the project repo. I don't actually know where it came from or whether it's current.
I have a few reasons why I wish to rework the loader application.
I should clarify; my interest is not simply trashing the loader and starting over, but with all the changes I describe, it's unlikely that the loader will look anything like it does now.
How many loaders do we have now?
My guess is that the loader in PropllerIDE has come from SimpleIDE. The loader in SimpleIDE came from prop-gcc.
In order to be able to program Propellers via the on board UART of of the Raspberry Pi I created my own fork pi-propeller-load https://github.com/ZiCog/pi-propeller-load. Using that UART requires using a GPIO pin for Propeller reset as the UART has no DTR/RTS.
pi-propeller-load can also be used on other systems like the cheap MIPS based routers and other ARM boards.
I understand that the changes I made have found their way back into prop-gcc so pi-propeller-load should now be redundant. I have not had a chance to check/test that.
I like your plans for a loader clean up. Some thoughts:
1) I always thought the loader should be separated out of prop-gcc and be it's own project with it's own repository. SimpleIDE, PropellerIDE and whatever else would likewise not include a loader of their own but use "the one true loader". Thus avoiding duplication of effort and keeping everyone in sync. The loader project would provide a libraries for others to use as well as a command line loader tool.
2) Using the Qt5 serial port worries me as it introduces a dependency on Qt which may not always be available. For example on those MIPS based routers or small Linux systems. Or perhaps others want to use the loader from other than Qt based programs. Certainly prop-gcc should not gain a dependency on Qt!
3) The base loader library should not include any internationalization. That is an overhead it does not need.
I'm currently tackling the Chrome book issue by creating a loader in JavaScript that can be used from Chrome apps or from Chrome extensions in the Chrome browser.
With that in place we will have a complete Spin IDE in the browser. Progress is rather slow on that project though.
You can always use the previous release.
However, I think it's already been fixed, it's just not available as a release yet; https://github.com/bweir/PropellerIDE/commit/5442b0349eb42078487c96239f0b7e00a292be81
In future I will volunteer to test new builds of PropellerIDE on Windows 7/8 to try and curtail any future problems like this one, since I have access to both a variety of Propeller-based boards, and computers running both of these OSes.
I downloaded it on Wednesday to my XP machine, and at seems just fine.
Cheers,
Peter (pjv)
Did you try to load RAM/EEPROM? My XP machine complains "Could not start loader". This is on COM 22
My Windows 7 does the same.
Surely you don't have so many com ports on your machine?!
I seem to remember there was an upper limit on the com port numbers PropellerIDE could deal with. Is there a way to get that down to a more sensible number?
-Phil