Erlang Extreme Programming & Refactoring, Was: non-telecom in erlang

[Eric Merritt]

Marc,

--- Marc Ernst Eddy van Woerkom
<Marc.Vanwoerkom@REDACTED> wrote:
> >    So what would the plugin have to do to be
> usefull in
> >   general (not just to me?)
> >
> >    Syntax Highlighting 
> >    Refactoring (Rename/Delete, etc?)
> >    Auto Compile(Error Reporting)
> >    CVS/Team Support 
> >    Interactive Shell
> >    Module Outlines
> 
> For Java programming, I have found the following
> features very useful.
> I believe they would be useful for Erlang
> development as well:
> 
> - easy documentation lookup: 
>   To have the cursor on a function name or some
> syntactic element and then
>   pressing a key or mouse click to be able to
> conjure up the documentation 
>   for it. Under Java this shows up either the
> official javadoc html for the
>   standard classes or if it is one of my written
> classes it tries to come up 
>   with local generated javadoc. 
>   Great would be, if also tutorial references could
> be offered.
>   (Java example: I look up a SWING class and I get
> the tutorial presented
>   as documentation choice)

  Hmm, the doc inclusion may be pretty would be
interesting. I will have to take another look at
erldoc and see if I can incorporate it.

> - problem resolution:
>   Eclipse seems to do background compilation thus
> while you
>   enter code you see various error conditions.
>   The interesting thing is that you can hit a key
> and Eclipse provides
>   proposals how to get rid of the current error.
>   E.g. under Java I used a standard class, but I
> have not written down
>   the import statement yet - in that case Eclipse
> offers me to insert
>   the import statement in its list of problem
> resolution proposals.

  This may be possible (at least its worth checking
into) I will add it to my list.

> 
> - source reformat:
>   The Java plugin has a broad range of options for
> formatting 
>   source code which map to the various indentation
> styles that are
>   common.
>   It then features a option to reformat source code
> according 
>   these rules. Which works quite good.

  Your right, I do love this as well. I would have to
come up with a set of standard options for erlang. I
might solicit suggestions for that.

 
> - support for literate programming:
>   Under Java this means special inserting /** .. */
> comments,
>   which are picked up by the javadoc tool to
> generate interface
>   documentation.
>   If my cursor is on a method I can chose the
> "generate javadoc"
>   option and Eclipse generates a bit of javadoc
> comment for it.
>   This done quite good, the comment shows the method
> name, it
>   fills out the documentation for method parameters
> and the
>   return value as well.
>   Together with the documentation lookup, it allowed
> me to generate
>   the javadoc documentation in very a quick and
> comfortable way.

  I would think that this may just be a matter of
integratting erldoc. I do think it would be worth it.
   
> - statement completion/library lookup:
>   A feature similiar to the auto completion found in
> Emacs.
>   One starts to write some statement and Eclipse
> offers you
>   a list box with possible completions. For Java it
> knows what
>   is available in the standard libs and what is
> available in
>   in the project, so you get a nice way to browse
> around and
>   quickly complete the statement in a safe way.

 I had actually already integrated the backend in pure
java. I think now that I am switching to a erlang
backend it would be much, much easier to do.

> 
> - debugging support:
>   It interfaces the text mode debugger to a GUI

 Yes I agree here as well.
 
> Regards,
> Marc


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