Re: IDE's that support ADA

[Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@stephe-leake.org>]

Luke A. Guest <laguest@archeia.com> writes:

> Due to Java and VisualStudio, people expect certain things from an
> IDE,

This would be better phrased as:

    People who are used to some Java IDEs and VisualStudio expect
    certain things from an IDE

I'm a member of the set "people who have used Java", and _I_ don't
expect the things being discussed here :). I used Emacs, of course.

> including automatic completion of identifiers across library
> boundaries, 

This is on my list of things to do.

> advanced editing of spec/body at the same time, 

What does this mean, exactly?

I guess it could mean:

    If I make changes to the spec of a function, make the same changes
    for me in the body.

    and vice-versa
    
That would be nice.

One approach to this is to provide a function "ada-resync-spec-body"
which would find the spec/body corresponding to the one at point, and
change it to match.

Anything else?

> Without an IDE that can do this I don't think people will ever take Ada
> seriously.

There's that mysterious "people" again :).

Clearly lots of people do take Ada seriously - AdaCore makes money. I
think you mean "Ada will never be as popular as Java etc". That's fine;
I don't care about that metric.

On the other hand, if you mean "some people who would otherwise use Ada
will never try it", that's an important point.

My impression is GPS has most of the features discussed so far
(except "advanced spec/body edit"), so I really only care about adding
things to Emacs.

> When new languages come out there are advanced IDE's created or existing
> ones extended very quickly. 

ok.

> Whereas Ada one dare started but not completed most probably due to
> the scale of the language involved.

I don't follow; we have:

- GPS

    not available "quickly" after Ada 83, but updated regularly since it
    was released

- Emacs ada-mode

    available soon after Ada 83, and updated regularly since then, but
    lacking in some advanced features.

- Eclipse ada-mode

    not clear when this was first available, still supported by AdaCore,
    not clear on advanced features

What is "not completed"?

-- 
-- Stephe