Re: GnatBench (from GPL edition)

[John McCabe <john@nospam.assen.demon.co.uk.nospam>]

Britt Snodgrass <britt.snodgrass@gmail.com> wrote:

>> > 1) It's phenomenally ugly, at least on Windows where the GTK widgets
>> > it uses just don't (in my opinion) look right. Perhaps GPS Pro is
>> > better?
>>
>> I guess you haven't seen Emacs on Win32? Not "pretty" by any
>> standards. But I just ignore that - I'm looking for function over form.
>
>I agree with function over form. GPS has some display quirks but I
>don't think it looks too bad.

I guess it's all a matter of opinion but, to me, on MS Windows (which
is what I am currently expected to develop on - albeit in C++ and not,
unfortunately, in Ada) GPS looks awful, like something out of the
'80s.

>GPS is optimized for use wth GNAT and GNAT projects (.gpr
>files).  That optimization is a good thing.

Of course it is a good thing, but....

>>
>> > 2) Who uses it outside the Ada world? Can you get full support for
>> > Python, Perl, PHP, Ant, Java plug-ins for it, what about ? Are you
>> > ever likely to?

>> Right. That's why I'm considering Eclipse.

>GNATbench development is progressing nicely.  I've been using
>GNATbench 2.1.0 since its release to supported customers.  I'm happy
>with it and confident that AdaCore will continue to improve it.

I'm intrigued about what will happen with Hibachi and GNATBench. It is
good that AdaCore are contributing to Hibachi (well, I assume it is,
not having got GNATBench 2.0.1 to work properly yet myself :-) I can
only assume that GNATBench in the future will use core Hibachi code
then AdaCore can concentrate on the value added GNAT optimised bits
and pieces.

>I
>like the fact that I can switch between GPS and GNATbench without
>touching my .gpr files.

That is very beneficial, if you've used GPS.

>As a development environment, Eclipse
>certainly looks nice and is very extensible, but its comparatively
>complex, heavyweight and sluggish compared to other options. That's
>why I also use GPS, Nedit, or TextPad depending on what I'm doing.

I'm in the unfortunate position that a lot of the early development of
the code we have at work was done in MS Visual Studio .NET and we've
developed tools around VS Project files, hence we continue to use
VS.NET. For some reason I have major issues with it - it's very slow
and hangs a lot. Eclipse is slow to start, but once it's going I've
had no real problems. Saying that, I use Emacs on a daily basis just
because it's more powerful for what I want.

>> > 4) It's got a silly acronym/abbreviation, it's too much like GPS
>> > (Global Positioning System)!
>>
>> That was discussed when it was first announced. It seems AdaCore
>> thought the conflation might actually be a good thing, since it would
>> generate attention.

>Some people I know use GPS to develop GPS :)

Yes - that helps ! :-}

>> > With all due respect to AdaCore, I do wonder why they ever bothered to
>> > create GPS - surely IDEs aren't their core business?
>>
>> They were looking to expand. And many people seem to expect a compiler
>> to come with a dedicated IDE. I suspect that's partly so they don't
>> have to figure out how to tell some other IDE to run the compiler.
>
>I agree. GPS is also a showcase of what can be accomplished with
>GtkAda.  Before GPS they had GLIDE.  GLIDE was great if you like Emacs
>but many people don't.

GPS may be a showcase for GTKAda but, on Windows, I don't think it
does GTK+ any favours. Look at the screenshot at

https://libre.adacore.com/gps/img/gps_800x600.jpg

Does that, to you, match up with the phrase  "Same modern GUI
available on all platforms " you can find at
https://libre.adacore.com/gps/main.html? To me the answer is plainly
no - that's the sort of GUI you'd be unlucky to get on Windows 3.1!

Anyway - I don't develop in Ada any more (unfortunately - with
caveats!) so it's not really my place to criticise the development
environments that are available but, it's so difficult for me not to!
Primarily it's through frustration - I like Eclipse and it's
frustrating that it has taken so long for the Ada world to get
something out to allow Eclipse to be used as an industrial strenght
Ada IDE!