Food for your consideration

[L. M.]

A few weeks ago I got an arduino board.  Playing around with the IDE (great stuff!!!) I ran into a couple of small pain points.  It is all open source.. so I looked at addressing some of them.  I started linking them in a catch-all GitHub issue which Federico rightly closed after pointing me to this location as the proper vehicle for further consideration. Much of this is working code, lots of it requiring remarkably little changes to the existing one (testimony of the quality of the early design).

This is the gab-bag issue :  https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/issues/4084 

I am also quoting its content here for faster access should you decide to look into some of them. Any of your time/input is highly appreciated, You'll probably find some of my questions simplistic, I am just a newbie on the platform.

Cheers,

LM/

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Aside from the bang-on-feature-set and quality of the board, IMHO the utterly simple approach of the supplied IDE is what made the Arduino a hit... instead of the dark-art that embedded programming has been for years, it suddenly became possible for any teenager to download a single zip and reliably get going in minutes. This is a awesome achievement!!! As time has passed, the IDE as retained the simplicity that made its success while adding capabilities. 

IMHO the platform is coming to a cross-roads. The skill-set of programmers keep growing, more rapidly than before I might add, and the current IDE is approaching (some might say it passed it) a point where its minimum feature-set will not longer be enough.

This issue entry is for the purpose of referencing under a single umbrella other individual issues meant to inject a number of capabilities that will give a dose of coolness factor to the current IDE (1.6.5_r5 at the time this is started).

• code completion #4089
• sketch navigation/outline view  #4083 (touching #4050)
• key bindings  #4086
• sketch debugger  #4010
• global search  #4077
• user defined scripts for file validation, data visualization, ... (relating to #4074)
• code templates
• wizards (sketch, library)
• dedicated class-room support features

More practical

• library editing #4085 (relating to #4064 #4065)
• splitting monolithic sketch into local libraries #4050 (relating to #4064 #4065)
• better multi-tab handling (relating to #3061 #4050)