[GRASS-dev] Programming in GRASS

GRASS GRASS developer
1

On Apr 9, 2009, at 5:57 AM, <grass-dev-request@lists.osgeo.org> <grass-dev-request@lists.osgeo.org> wrote:

From: Hamish <hamish_b@yahoo.com>

Date: April 9, 2009 5:54:04 AM GMT-07:00

To: grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org, dasuni kannangara <dasuni7@gmail.com>

Subject: Re: [GRASS-dev] Programming in GRASS

dasuni kannangara wrote:

Thanks. But i am developing a tool using GRASS source

codes. So i need to open the whole GRASS project (source

codes) and study the codes (functions etc). I am looking for

an IDE which i can open the whole project and debug(such as

Visual Studio in Microsoft).

I am curious to know if any of the current devels use an IDE
for grass? personally I just use nedit for normal stuff and vi
for minor|major tasks, and make from the command line. debug
using printf, gdb, and/or kdbg depending on how evil it is.
works well for me.

does emacs count as an IDE or would that be insulting its power?

Are there such IDEs available???

#debian/lenny package search:
$ apt-cache search IDE | wc -l
8882

well mostly false positives in there I’m sure, but you get the
idea. open source is rather unsurprisingly well blessed with
tools for programmers.

#more realistic
$ apt-cache search editor | wc -l
609

A search for " IDE " returns 43 hits.

“Eclipse” is mainly for Java AFAICT, but it most likely will
handle C too. seems popular in the press.

good luck,
Hamish

Dasuni,

Both Editra (with a plugin) and Komodo support defining the GRASS source tree as a project (i.e., as in Eclipse). Editra now has some limited SVN capabilities built in as well as an interactive terminal window for testing code (may be limited to Python).

Hamish,

I use an IDE for gui development. It makes it work much easier. I’m using Editra currently because it has some nice tools especially for Python. OpenEclipse is fine, but pretty large and klunky since I don’t do Java and don’t need all of it’s bells and whistles and other gadgets. Komodo has a lot of nice features, but I miss the integrated terminal and SVN tools that come in Editra now. And Editra is being rapidly improved on. It seems like I’m alerted to an update every month or so. All of the above come with autocompletion and syntax checking (as well as coloring) in multiple platforms, auto indenting (a MUST in Python), bookmarking, folding, and other niceties. Another IDE for Python is SPE. It has a lot of very nice Python-oriented features and layouts (e.g., Glade for rapid wxPython development), but I didn’t need them all and it seemed sluggish. I tried NetBeans awhile back. It didn’t do much for me, but one of my students says that it has been considerably improved lately.

Michael