Re: GnatBench (from GPL edition)

[Britt Snodgrass <britt.snodgrass@gmail.com>]

On Mar 28, 7:28 pm, Stephen Leake <Stephe.Le...@nasa.gov> wrote:
> John McCabe <j...@nospam.assen.demon.co.uk> writes:
> > On Thu, 27 Mar 2008 05:07:30 -0400, Stephen Leake
> > <Stephe.Le...@nasa.gov> wrote:
>
> >>John McCabe <j...@nospam.assen.demon.co.uk.nospam> writes:
>
> >>I've been tempted to switch to Eclipse from Emacs, mostly because Java
> >>is better for writing structured code than Lisp; I'm getting tired of
> >>fighting obscure Lisp code in Emacs.
>
> > Oh no - surely not!!! Don't do it Stephe, who'll look after ada-mode
> > :-)
>
> It will just wither away and die. I think Emacs is headed in that
> direction anyway.
>
> >>(Yes, I know that means I should go all the way and switch to GPS. But
> >>Eclipse has far more capability than GPS; it's much closer to Emacs).
>
> > Personally I'd avoid GPS. I've only had a little play with it, but two
> > things about GPS would put me off...
>
> > 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 use it with Consolas as my editor
font.  GPS is optimized for use wth GNAT and GNAT projects (.gpr
files).  That optimization is a good thing.

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

>
> > 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 :)

>
> Since people conflate Ada and ADA and all the other ADA's all the
> time, what's a little more?
>
> > 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.

- Britt