Tcl under Eclipse - interested users?
Bill Schongar
There are some efforts underway to look at putting support for
languages such as Tcl into Eclipse (www.eclipse.org, for those
unfamiliar with it).
One of the things that's being gauged currently is what large groups
of users for each language would be interested, especially corporations.
So for those of you out there who work someplace where Tcl is used
heavily by large numbers of people, like it is here at Cisco, I'd be
interested in hearing from you.
Thanks,
-Bill
Test Technologies, Cisco Systems
Sean Woods
Automation tools for the semiconductor industry. We used Tcl/Tk a lot
for software testing.
GlennH
We're currently implementing the RUP process and introducing Rational
TestManager. Towards the end of the year Rational plan to deliver their
next generation testing tools based around Eclipse (Haydes).
As our main test automation language is Tcl (lots of Perl in the company
too) I'm keen to see Tcl in Eclipse.
At the moment I've almost no exposure to Eclipse - I've downloaded it
but not really been using it.
Glenn
Robert Oliver
<snip>
> One of the things that's being gauged currently is what large groups of
> users for each language would be interested, especially corporations. So
> for those of you out there who work someplace where Tcl is used heavily
> by large numbers of people, like it is here at Cisco, I'd be interested
> in hearing from you.
We use Tcl for testing, launching and configuring applications, and some
inter-application processing like parsing command grammars. We don't
use Eclipse now, but were discussing it today and wondering about using
it with Tcl and C++. Sounds like a good idea. BTW we've about 8 on our
team.
Regards,
Bob Oliver
Patrick
pfin...@ozemail.com.au
"Robert Oliver" <re...@newsgroup.only> wrote in message
news:tvydndGCpZU...@comcast.com...
Eclipse was originally a java IDE developed by IBM as a replacement for the
"Visual Age For Java" IDE which had a proprietary non extensible
architecture. IBM designed Eclipse with an open extensible API to allow the
addition of third party features known as plugins, then open sourced the
base product.
The plugins are written in Java so any attempt to add Tcl support to Eclipse
involves learning Java and writing lots of Java code. The end result would
be a very slow primitive Tcl debugger with syntax highlighting inferior to
even the open source TCL development environments. Building in support for
TK and the other popular Tcl libraries would be even more work.
The Tcl community would be better off releasing up to date versions of
TclBlend and JACL in an easily deployable format i.e Windows binaries.
Enabling Tcl connectivity to java class libraries and java applications in
remote JVMs is much more important than building yet another IDE.
Christopher Nelson
> Eclipse was originally a java IDE developed by IBM as a replacement
> for the "Visual Age For Java" IDE which had a proprietary non
> extensible architecture. IBM designed Eclipse with an open
> extensible API to allow the addition of third party features known
> as plugins, then open sourced the base product.
>
> The plugins are written in Java so any attempt to add Tcl support
>
> The Tcl community would be better off releasing up to date versions
Unless I'm quite confused, TclBlend and JACL aren't IDEs which is what
we're talking about here.
Yes, Eclipse is Java-based. Yes, writing a Tcl plug-in for Eclipse
would require Java programming. No, myopic Tcl experts wouldn't be up
to that task. But there are lots of polyglots 'round here and Eclipse
seems to offer a good platform to build on (that's kind of the point).
We'd have to write a Tcl parser in Java but we'd get an interface to
Make and Ant and CVS, a syntax highlighting editor, refactoring tools,
etc., etc.
While I have no use for visual design tools (emacs makes a fine Tk
layout tools, thankyouverymuch), IDEs for code are great. If I can use
Eclipse for a multi-language project where one of those languages is
Tcl or for multiple projects, some of which are in Tcl, that's a win
for me. I'd like to see a full-features plug-in for Tcl. I might even
find time to contribute to the effort and I have a couple of years' of
Java experience to get me started.
Chris
Donal K. Fellows
> No, myopic Tcl experts wouldn't be up to that task.
Speak for yourself, writing as someone who is short-sighted. ;^)
Donal.
Bill Schongar
> The plugins are written in Java so any attempt to add Tcl support to Eclipse
> involves learning Java and writing lots of Java code. The end result would
> be a very slow primitive Tcl debugger with syntax highlighting inferior to
> even the open source TCL development environments. Building in support for
> TK and the other popular Tcl libraries would be even more work.
Actually the effort being looked at is a bit less simplistic than just a
Tcl language plugin - it's concerned with the core capabilities to
support languages besides Java, and would involve Perl, Python, et al.
I'm not the best one to go into the details here in c.l.t, but for
anyone who's interested email me offline with your contact info and I'll
put you in touch with the appropriate people for those details.
I'm just collecting names and such specifically for Tcl support.
-Bill
bschonga at cisco.com
Patrick Finnegan
"Christopher Nelson" <cne...@nycap.rr.com> wrote in message
news:1112364410.5...@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
Fine in theory but...................................
Have a look at the plugins for Perl(EPIC) and Python(Pydev).
Comment from Python programmer on Eclipse with Pydev.
"I've used it for some java stuff and know plenty of people that do every
day
and they all love it for Java, but having tried using it for anything else
it's
next to useless. In fact it's worse than a plain editor in some ways when
your
not using it for Java".
Eclipse is big and slow and needs a lot of expertise to configure it
properly
for just java development. The Eclipse based commercial IBM java
development
environment(WSAD) requires 7000 IBM plugins and retails at $5000 US per
license
before volume discounts. By Comparison the Active State TCl/Perl IDE Komodo
retails
for $295 US before volume discounts. Active State are practically giving it
away.
See details are: http://www.activestate.com/Products/Komodo/
In my opinion the best approach to Tcl/Java IDE integration is to take
something like Komodo and embed the Sun JVM with a jacl or tcl interface.
CISCO could pay Active State to do this. It's not like CISCO are short of
cash!
Eckhard Lehmann
> The plugins are written in Java so any attempt to add Tcl support to Eclipse
> involves learning Java and writing lots of Java code. The end result would
Not for people who are familiar with (at least) java.
> be a very slow primitive Tcl debugger with syntax highlighting inferior to
Java is not slow. It can be *made* slow, of course ;-). The only bad
thing about eclipse is the startup time, but except that it is really
great IDE.
> even the open source TCL development environments. Building in support for
> TK and the other popular Tcl libraries would be even more work.
I am sure that TclBlend could be employed for that.
> The Tcl community would be better off releasing up to date versions of
> TclBlend and JACL in an easily deployable format i.e Windows binaries.
> Enabling Tcl connectivity to java class libraries and java applications in
> remote JVMs is much more important than building yet another IDE.
Yes it is important. And having some people coding on an eclipse
plugin using TclBlend will probably have nice side effects on
TclBlend.
Using eclipse for multilanguage projects (currently writing an app in
C[++]/Tcl), I would definitely appreciate an eclipse Tcl-Plugin and
would support the work as well as I can. Sadly I can only do this in a
very limited part of my spare time...
Eckhard ;)
Eckhard Lehmann
> We'd have to write a Tcl parser in Java but we'd get an interface to
Is there a language definition file for Tcl somewhere (probably yes)?
Javacc (https://javacc.dev.java.net/) could be used to write this
parser.
> Make and Ant and CVS, a syntax highlighting editor, refactoring tools,
> etc., etc.
And syntax completion - one of the most useful features in Eclipse
Eckhard ;)
David N. Welton
> And syntax completion - one of the most useful features in Eclipse
In Italy, the phrase people use for this sort of thing is "discovering
hot water". Syntax completion of various types has been available for
years in Emacs and Vim.
--
David N. Welton
- http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/
Apache, Linux, Tcl Consulting
- http://www.dedasys.com/
Eckhard Lehmann
> eck...@web.de (Eckhard Lehmann) writes:
>
> > And syntax completion - one of the most useful features in Eclipse
>
> In Italy, the phrase people use for this sort of thing is "discovering
> hot water". Syntax completion of various types has been available for
> years in Emacs and Vim.
I am using Vim for Tcl and other things - but have not discovered this
until now. Can you give me a hint how to have syntax completion with
Tcl and Vim?
Eckhard ;)
David N. Welton
> I am using Vim for Tcl and other things - but have not discovered
> this until now. Can you give me a hint how to have syntax completion
> with Tcl and Vim?
I'm in the emacs camp myself, but my vim using friends tell me that
it's possible... I'll let one of them answer.
Uwe Koloska
>
> I'm in the emacs camp myself,
And how is (syntax) completion done in (X)emacs? I have searched
for something like intellisense for years ...
Uwe
--
voiceINTERconnect www.voiceinterconnect.de
... smart speech applications from germany
David N. Welton
> David N. Welton wrote:
> > I'm in the emacs camp myself,
> And how is (syntax) completion done in (X)emacs? I have searched
> for something like intellisense for years ...
You can do 'dumb' completion with alt-/ which is usually enough for
me.
This looks like it might be an improvement over that:
http://cedet.sourceforge.net/intellisense.shtml
Donal K. Fellows
> Is there a language definition file for Tcl somewhere (probably yes)?
> Javacc (https://javacc.dev.java.net/) could be used to write this
> parser.
Umm, Tcl doesn't work like that. Sure, you could define a LL(1) or LR(1)
grammar[*] but it wouldn't help; the language is not usefully defined in
a context-free way.
Donal.
[* Just encode the rules in the Tcl(n) manual page. ]
Robert Seeger
highlighting) is that almost everything is "discovered" at runtime.
While it's possible to make educated guesses which are right the vast
majority of the time, it's not uncommon to have pieces of text that
could be either data or code.
Even the tcl-mode for emacs has issues. A large number of people have
worked on making it better, but I have yet to see anyone get it
completely right.
Rob Seeger
bscho...@users.sf.net
I'd image only a few rules are required. These may be a little
simplified, but off the top of my head you do pretty decent
highlighting with just a few regexps
{ (^|[\[])\s+(\S)\s} (\S component will be a command)
{[$]\S} (variable)
{(\"|\').*(\"\')} (quoted string)
{#.*$} (comment)
But I agree with you that getting it 100% perfect is pretty damn hard
and probably not worth the effort or processing power.
Artur Trzewik
The another way is to simulate a first level of tcl processing.
The syntax hightlight in XOTclIDE (http://www.xdobry.de/xotclIDE)
is programmed such way.
Idea:
Tcl script is a list. Tcl command is a list. A parameter of command
can be script (example: for while if)
Command "for" has parameter in list form: script expr script script
The same is used for syntax checking. (discovering for variable names)
It works good for most tcl scripts.
The problem are self defined control structures and data that contains
scripts.
Artur Trzewik
Donal K. Fellows
> { (^|[\[])\s+(\S)\s} (\S component will be a command)
> {[$]\S} (variable)
> {(\"|\').*(\"\')} (quoted string)
> {#.*$} (comment)
The problem is identifying the "keywords" and variable declarations.
That's hard, and yet it is also the bit that helps people using the code
most.
Donal.
Robert Seeger
starts to get really hard to fontify things. As an example:
string map {" &dquot;}
The above will blow up on te quoted string regexp. As another note, the
single quote doesn't create strings in Tcl, does it?
The variable regexp blows up in some places, and the comment regexp
needs to be told only to apply when it would be the start of a command,
and that \ means it continues to the next line.
In addition, quotes and the like in a comment should change the
fontification, in my opinion. There's just a TON of special cases.
Rob Seeger
Eckhard Lehmann
> eck...@web.de (Eckhard Lehmann) writes:
>
> > I am using Vim for Tcl and other things - but have not discovered
> > this until now. Can you give me a hint how to have syntax completion
> > with Tcl and Vim?
>
> I'm in the emacs camp myself, but my vim using friends tell me that
> it's possible... I'll let one of them answer.
I found out (using Google ;-), that it works by putting the following
into ~/.vimrc (~/_vimrc)
---
function InsertTabWrapper()
let col = col('.') - 1
if !col || getline('.')[col - 1] !~ '\k'
return "\<tab>"
else
return "\<c-p>"
endif
endfunction
inoremap <tab> <c-r>=InsertTabWrapper()<cr>
---
It does syntax completion for other languages too...
Eckhard ;)