Modula-3 editor in Eclipse... shouldn't be that hard, should it?

[Bert Laverman]

Y'all,
I took a look at Eclipse plugins recently, and I think that, using
examples from e.g. the NSIS configuration editor and the demo Java
plugin, making a Modula-3 aware editor wouldn't be that hard.
Anybody ever tried something like that?

I've got an interest in this, as I kind of overdid some scripting
tool I made, and ended up with a nice start at an M3 toolkit. I'm
trying to see if I can convince legal to take this home, otherwise
I'ld have to re-start.

It's in Java, but has full access to the JVM. Module identifiers are
layered like Java to give packages, but IMPORTs will just as easily
import a Java runtime package. It's far from complete, but is a big
help as scripting language.

I guess I wanted scripting, but not Perl or PHP. Can't help myself,
just like writing compilers, and my job never needs them. Ah well,
that's what you get for working for an employer who wants development
risks for tooling to be with vendors of tools.

Bert Laverman

[Daniel Benavides]

If you are intereseted in developing a plugin for eclipse, I think it
would a very nice idea, specially, for the y know plataforms supported
with the cm3 distro and why not, pm3.
What tasks do you plan, and what are the knowledge needed to acomplish
it?

Daniel Benavides
Bert Laverman ha escrito:

[Bert Laverman]

Daniel,
since I don't have a book detailing how to do this (and the
O'Reilly book on Eclipse I did read said little more than what the
documentation says) the "steps" would be:
- Install Eclipse with plugin development stuff
- Find plugin demo or other editor source
- study example and start new one.

Unfortunately nothing more than this simplistic plan. My first
attempt gave me no syntax highlighting, but I did find out
how to trigger the auto-complete.

The standard demo of a Java Editor helps a bit, and I think
the NSIS editor could be an alternative. I haven't found a real
manual or explanation yet. It'll be a non-trivial exercise in
Java hacking I'm afraid.

To be sure, just a plain editor isn't much of a problem, the default
text editor will do that. It's the support for syntax higlighting
and auto-complete that is the mystery I'm trying to fathom.

Do you have any ideas? Might there be an open sourced Pascal or
Ada plugin somewhere? That would probably be a better start.

Cheers,
Bert

[Izo]

A little bit out of topic, yet might be interesting.

I have made the Modula-3 highlighting for the KDE's Katepart, used also
within the KDE KDevelop3. Unfortunately the KDE community did not
succeed to publish it in recent two years ...

Anyway, if anybody is interested, drop me an e-mail to ikobal at volja
dot net .

I have also been thinking about the KDevelop3 CM3 plugin, but at the
time the KDevelop's plugin system was not very much documented and I
gave up.

Izo

[Bert Laverman]

A related question, and I hope with more reponses.

What license, and who do we assign the copyright to?

I have been browsing Eclipse and Apache licensing pages,
and getting confused. The Apache folks warn about personal
copyrights, as that (according to them) opens you up for
personal lawsiuts. Now I am going to provide all without
any warranty, (as the licenses usually shout "IMPLIED OR
OTHERWISE") but don't know what to make of that. I'm in
Europe, so lawsuiting isn't as crazy as it is in the US, but
what do you all think?

Bert Laverman

[Daniel Benavides]

I think you are the head of the project, so I prefer let that clear,
giving you the recognize of leading the project.
As we know the project is aproved on sourceforge
https://sourceforge.net/projects/m3clipse/
However we must think if the plugin will be distributed with m3
distribution sources.
In that case, we must ask whether the EPL license is compatible with
the m3 distribution licences.
If not, as we may think, because of the nature of the package, we can
think that EPL will be compatible with GPL software (look on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eclipse_Public_License ).

Daniel Benavides

[Bert Laverman]

I have had a discussion with somebody from the Eclipse project, as well
as doing some reading. The new GPL (v3) will be compatible with the EPL,
but more importantly, the plugin is something that would be distributed
together with Eclipse rather than a Modula-3 distribution, if only
because it should be independent of them, while being heavily dependent
on Eclipse.

Personally I found that a most convincing argument, so I specified EPL
when requesting the sourceforge project.

We'll work out some boilerplate template text for the Java files later
on. Copyright will just be your own, license EPL.

Step one will be getting the editor, but that is mostly standard Eclipse
stuff. Next come the syntax coloring and auto-complete. Finally, if we
can get some form of compilation working, we'll be able to add syntax
checking and outlines. Build may be a bit different, as -last time I
looked- M3 compilers tend to be even more holistic than Java; they want
the whole project rather than individual modules/interfaces. I'ld like
to automate that, but don't know yet if that would actually be easy to do.

Cheers,
Bert