http://qs1969.pair.com?node_id=45840

BBQ has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

For all you Windows people out there, as of November Komodo has been available for download at ActiveStates site. I've also noticed that they have release the Visual Perl plugin for the new MS development suite (.Net?).

My question is, "Has anyone evaluated these editors / IDEs? What do you think?"

I am currently downloading Komodo as I write this, but I wanted to get other monks' opinion as well.

#!/home/bbq/bin/perl
# Trust no1!

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Visual Perl & Komodo
by boo_radley (Parson) on Dec 09, 2000 at 05:34 UTC
    First off, when I downloaded Komodo, it was in October, and still a developmental release. I don't know if that's changed. For those who are wondering idly, it currently runs under NT only, and Python must be installed. Komodo has a Mozilla based framework, so there's some things that don't quite make sense, that I hope will be taken out, or altered (e.g. the IRC client is still present. Maybe that could be hacked into a CB client; I dunno), and some things present Mozilla "we're accepting patches" alerts. While some of the visual elements bother me for stylistic reasons, they're functional, and for someone who cut teeth on Visual Studio, somewhat to quite familiar. Stepping into, over and through code is amazing :) perl -d seems a little flat this; it'll step through as far down as you like -- through your source and through all the modules you call.

    I was also impressed with the variable watch window. It appears to understand all the basic datatypes, as well as hashes of things and arrays of things, and will present keys and values, if appropriate. I hope they define some kind of mouseover/tooltip behavior like VS does so that hovering over a variable will show a tooltip with its value. Komodo also has project files to group individual source files together, syntax highlighting which seems fairly intelligent for perl and Python, and grammar checking.

    It is still in development, however... I managed to crash it a few times, and depending on the operation (DBI call, if I recall) the program became non-responsive & had to be killed off. The documentation was decent for a devel release. There were a few unfinished sections, but the had the meat of the important stuff in there. I'm eager to see how Komodo progresses. I'd especially like to see an win9x release so I can use it at home.

Re: Visual Perl & Komodo
by 2501 (Pilgrim) on Dec 09, 2000 at 09:39 UTC
    I too downloaded Komodo in October with the intention of evaluating it for its worth in a production environment.
    I was not pleased, but I have not given up hope on the future of Komodo.
    1.) I do not like being forced to download Python. If I am never going to use python, I don't want to be required to obtain it for functionality I will never require.
    2.) The tracing portion of the program looked alittle neglected, and it actually caused my Win2k machine to slowly crash in a nasty manner due to resource consumption.
    At this time there was nothing that interested me enough for the pluses to outweigh the minuses. Uninstalling Komodo also caused my machine to bite the dust once.
    I still think the idea is sound, and I think active state is alright. My money is not on the production release, but the release after.
Re: Visual Perl & Komodo (not quite ready for prime time player)
by ybiC (Prior) on Dec 09, 2000 at 06:13 UTC
    I've dabbled with Komodo pr2 and 3 on NT 4 and Win2k.   In either case is clearly technology preview product.   Bombs, crashes, or flat won't open files during most sessions, on otherwise stable boxes.

    I've not dug in as deep as boo_radley, but am also eager to see it's progress continue.
        cheers,
        Don
        striving for Perl Adept
        (it's pronounced "why-bick")

Re: Visual Perl & Komodo
by mrmick (Curate) on Dec 09, 2000 at 07:07 UTC
    I've tried it and it keeps crashing on me. Gave up on it the first day....

    I'm not a great fan of IDE's anyway. They seem to make you work by their rules.

    Mick