Eclipse & gnatbench

Eclipse & gnatbench

[Alex R. Mosteo]

Hello,

I'm trying to evaluate gnatbench and I'm failing miserably. I have a stock
Eclipse Classic 3.3.2 freshly installed and gnat GPL 2007 installed and well
tested. Gnatbench version is 2.0.1 from the gpl 2007 download page. After
gnatbench installation I cannot find anything Ada-related in eclipse. Trying
to open an ada file from within eclipse results in a launched xemacs with that
file...

Gnatbench comes without any documentation I could find. Has anyone here tried
it? Care to share some pointers?

Thanks in advance,

Alex.

Re: Eclipse & gnatbench

[Eric Hughes]

On Mar 6, 9:56 am, "Alex R. Mosteo" <devn...@mailinator.com> wrote:
> I'm trying to evaluate gnatbench and I'm failing miserably. I have a stock
> Eclipse Classic 3.3.2 freshly installed and gnat GPL 2007 installed and well
> tested.

Gnatbench requires that CDT be installed prior.  That tidbit was in
one of the few bits of documentation I read about it.  Not a problem
for me, as I already had it in place.

> Gnatbench comes without any documentation I could find. Has anyone here tried
> it? Care to share some pointers?

Installation worked fine for me.  I'm not using it because,
apparently, it has no way of dealing with alternate source naming
conventions.  I don't use GNAT's default ".ads" and ".adb"; I can't
discriminate between them quick enough on the screen.  If you're not
customizing your environment that way, perhaps it will work for you.

Eric

Re: Eclipse & gnatbench

[Britt Snodgrass]

On Mar 6, 12:10 pm, Eric Hughes <eric....@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 6, 9:56 am, "Alex R. Mosteo" <devn...@mailinator.com> wrote:
>
> > I'm trying to evaluate gnatbench and I'm failing miserably. I have a stock
> > Eclipse Classic 3.3.2 freshly installed and gnat GPL 2007 installed and well
> > tested.
>
> Gnatbench requires that CDT be installed prior.  That tidbit was in
> one of the few bits of documentation I read about it.  Not a problem
> for me, as I already had it in place.
>
> > Gnatbench comes without any documentation I could find. Has anyone here tried
> > it? Care to share some pointers?
>
> Installation worked fine for me.  I'm not using it because,
> apparently, it has no way of dealing with alternate source naming
> conventions.  I don't use GNAT's default ".ads" and ".adb"; I can't
> discriminate between them quick enough on the screen.  If you're not
> customizing your environment that way, perhaps it will work for you.
>
> Eric

I have the newly released 2.1.0 version at work. Its very good. It
handles the Apex naming convention (i.e., *.1.ada & *.2.ada) just fine
if the GNATbench project's .gpr file specifies it *and* if the
internal Eclipse file association preferences are updated to associate
the .ada extension with the GNATbench Ada editor (in addition to .ads
and .adb).

Documentation is installed along with the plug-in and is available via
Eclipse's Help -> help Contents menu.

- Britt

Re: Eclipse & gnatbench

[Alex R. Mosteo]

Eric Hughes wrote:

> On Mar 6, 9:56 am, "Alex R. Mosteo" <devn...@mailinator.com> wrote:
>> I'm trying to evaluate gnatbench and I'm failing miserably. I have a stock
>> Eclipse Classic 3.3.2 freshly installed and gnat GPL 2007 installed and well
>> tested.
> 
> Gnatbench requires that CDT be installed prior.  That tidbit was in
> one of the few bits of documentation I read about it.  Not a problem
> for me, as I already had it in place.

Oookay, thanks. Then I see in the eclipse comparison page that a good starting
point is the C/C++ one (more so since my projects are multilanguage).

>> Gnatbench comes without any documentation I could find. Has anyone here
>> tried it? Care to share some pointers?
> 
> Installation worked fine for me.  I'm not using it because,
> apparently, it has no way of dealing with alternate source naming
> conventions.  I don't use GNAT's default ".ads" and ".adb"; I can't
> discriminate between them quick enough on the screen.  If you're not
> customizing your environment that way, perhaps it will work for you.

I use stock gnat naming, so I don't expect to have a problem with this. I
though you could specify alternate naming conventions in your project files?

Re: Eclipse & gnatbench

[Alex R. Mosteo]

Britt Snodgrass wrote:

> On Mar 6, 12:10 pm, Eric Hughes <eric....@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mar 6, 9:56 am, "Alex R. Mosteo" <devn...@mailinator.com> wrote:
>>
>> > I'm trying to evaluate gnatbench and I'm failing miserably. I have a stock
>> > Eclipse Classic 3.3.2 freshly installed and gnat GPL 2007 installed and
>> > well tested.
>>
>> Gnatbench requires that CDT be installed prior.  That tidbit was in
>> one of the few bits of documentation I read about it.  Not a problem
>> for me, as I already had it in place.
>>
>> > Gnatbench comes without any documentation I could find. Has anyone here
>> > tried it? Care to share some pointers?
>>
>> Installation worked fine for me.  I'm not using it because,
>> apparently, it has no way of dealing with alternate source naming
>> conventions.  I don't use GNAT's default ".ads" and ".adb"; I can't
>> discriminate between them quick enough on the screen.  If you're not
>> customizing your environment that way, perhaps it will work for you.
>>
>> Eric
> 
> I have the newly released 2.1.0 version at work. Its very good. It
> handles the Apex naming convention (i.e., *.1.ada & *.2.ada) just fine
> if the GNATbench project's .gpr file specifies it *and* if the
> internal Eclipse file association preferences are updated to associate
> the .ada extension with the GNATbench Ada editor (in addition to .ads
> and .adb).
> 
> Documentation is installed along with the plug-in and is available via
> Eclipse's Help -> help Contents menu.

Thanks, Britt. Incidentally, have you used GPS? If so, which one do you prefer?
I'm a long-time GPS user but have never grown totally comfortable to it.

Re: Eclipse & gnatbench

[Eric Hughes]

On Mar 6, 9:49 pm, Britt Snodgrass <britt.snodgr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It
> handles the Apex naming convention (i.e., *.1.ada & *.2.ada) just fine
> if the GNATbench project's .gpr file specifies it [...]

Already had that.

> [...] *and* if the
> internal Eclipse file association preferences are updated to associate
> the .ada extension with the GNATbench Ada editor (in addition to .ads
> and .adb).

Didn't have that, and it seems to improve matters.  Thank you.

I did check, though, and I could not find the necessity of a second
manual step anywhere in the documentation available under Eclipse.  I
suppose I had naively figured that if I specified the naming
convention once (in the .gpr file), that it would automagically work
in the tool wherever it needed to.

Eric

Re: Eclipse & gnatbench

[Britt Snodgrass]

On Mar 7, 1:09 pm, Eric Hughes <eric....@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 6, 9:49 pm, Britt Snodgrass <britt.snodgr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > It
> > handles the Apex naming convention (i.e., *.1.ada & *.2.ada) just fine
> > if the GNATbench project's .gpr file specifies it [...]
>
> Already had that.
>
> > [...] *and* if the
> > internal Eclipse file association preferences are updated to associate
> > the .ada extension with the GNATbench Ada editor (in addition to .ads
> > and .adb).
>
> Didn't have that, and it seems to improve matters.  Thank you.
>
> I did check, though, and I could not find the necessity of a second
> manual step anywhere in the documentation available under Eclipse.  I
> suppose I had naively figured that if I specified the naming
> convention once (in the .gpr file), that it would automagically work
> in the tool wherever it needed to.
>
> Eric

Its not in the documentation.  I had to ask AdaCore. I think they
didn't want to risk taking over file associations from a different Ada
compiler but I'm pretty sure the Eclipse file association preference
settings are only relevant inside Eclipse.  I still keep a copy of
Apex Ada NT 4.2.0c installed. Setting the .ada association inside
Eclipse didn't change the association outside of Eclipse - double-
clicking a *.1.ada file outside of Eclipse still launches Apex NT.

I think it would be good if GNATbench's Ada editor was automatically
associated with .ada and .adc (for gnat.adc) extensions inside
Eclipse.  Outside of Eclipse I prefer to keep .ads, .adb and .gpr
extensions associated with their GPS editor so that GPS is launched
when I double-click the file in Windoze Exploder.  I usually manage
Windows file associations using the "assoc" and "ftype" commands
available from cmd.exe if I need to change them.

As far as I know. there is no way to pass a filename to Eclipse during
startup. This means there is no way to open a file in Eclipse/
GNATbench simply by double-clicking on a filename.

- Britt

Re: Eclipse & gnatbench

[Britt Snodgrass]

On Mar 7, 4:55 am, "Alex R. Mosteo" <devn...@mailinator.com> wrote:
> Britt Snodgrass wrote:
> > On Mar 6, 12:10 pm, Eric Hughes <eric....@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On Mar 6, 9:56 am, "Alex R. Mosteo" <devn...@mailinator.com> wrote:
>
> >> > I'm trying to evaluate gnatbench and I'm failing miserably. I have a stock
> >> > Eclipse Classic 3.3.2 freshly installed and gnat GPL 2007 installed and
> >> > well tested.
>
> >> Gnatbench requires that CDT be installed prior.  That tidbit was in
> >> one of the few bits of documentation I read about it.  Not a problem
> >> for me, as I already had it in place.
>
> >> > Gnatbench comes without any documentation I could find. Has anyone here
> >> > tried it? Care to share some pointers?
>
> >> Installation worked fine for me.  I'm not using it because,
> >> apparently, it has no way of dealing with alternate source naming
> >> conventions.  I don't use GNAT's default ".ads" and ".adb"; I can't
> >> discriminate between them quick enough on the screen.  If you're not
> >> customizing your environment that way, perhaps it will work for you.
>
> >> Eric
>
> > I have the newly released 2.1.0 version at work. Its very good. It
> > handles the Apex naming convention (i.e., *.1.ada & *.2.ada) just fine
> > if the GNATbench project's .gpr file specifies it *and* if the
> > internal Eclipse file association preferences are updated to associate
> > the .ada extension with the GNATbench Ada editor (in addition to .ads
> > and .adb).
>
> > Documentation is installed along with the plug-in and is available via
> > Eclipse's Help -> help Contents menu.
>
> Thanks, Britt. Incidentally, have you used GPS? If so, which one do you prefer?
> I'm a long-time GPS user but have never grown totally comfortable to it.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

I've only started using GPS recently.  I like it pretty well but I
prefer Eclipse with the new GNATbench.  A good thing about GPS and
GNATbench is that they can both use the same .gpr file.  I tend to use
GPS now when I want to take a quick look at a file (GPS launches
faster than Eclipse).  I usually launch GPS by either double-clicking
the .gpr file or by using a Windoze shortcut to launch "gps.exe -P
my_project.gpr"  It  doesn't make much sense to use either GPS or
GNATbench outside the context of a GNAT project file.

Another advantage of GPS is that it doesn't require a JVM and it seems
more stable. Eclipse is a little flakey and prone to sudden crashes
(unhandled Java exceptions).

My favorite general purpose text editor is TextPad 4.7.3 (not buggy
5.x).  Its fast, has a very clean interface, and its easy to integrate
all the GNAT command line tools (gnatmake, gnatpp, etc.) as TextPad
external tools.

- Britt