Dear Lazyweb,
Recently my trusty old linux book died so I started coding on a macbook pro. I've found iTerm to be a great addition to my toolkit, but I haven't been able to get the sweet Perl development environment I had in Linux.
When I was using Linux I had Vim hacked up to do everything I needed. I started to get symptoms of RSI from the repetitive key banging so I took up Emacs again and tricked it out with perlnow and other extensions. I used both editors, and like cross training in sports, I got a better workout.
But when I switched to developing on the Mac, I didn't have the full functionality of both my tricked out editors under iTerm, or even the mac Terminal. I tried Aquamacs but the standard tricks I had for invoking the debugger, etc. didn't work off the shelf (although I'm still really impressed by it and use it often). I tried TextMate, but it doesn't have the power of Vim or Emacs. Am I being too demanding here?
What are you using to do Perl development on OS X? Have you found the 'perfect setup'?
vim but now textmate
melo on 2007-01-12T10:53:24
Hi,
after I switched five years ago, i also had a tough time with vim and mac os x. I ended up compiling vim from source (at the time with 10.1 it was a mess...), but I got it to work.
Now, I switched to textmate, because I had a hard time making vim6 understand unicode in mac os x. I've grown accustomed to textmate snippets (I think there is a vim package now for something similar), and I'm happy.
it took a while to drop vim key sequences from the brain, being there for more than 10 years now, but I'm happy with textmate.
regarding the rest of the environment, I use the stock perl because is good enough for what I do, and unless you really need more recent features, I would suggest you do the same, less hassle.
I do have a recent perl stashed somewhere in
/opt to test somethings, though.
Best regards,
Re:vim but now textmate
sigzero on 2007-01-12T11:53:53
Just so you know...there is already a Vim7 package for OSX:
http://macvim.org/OSX/index.php
There are also suggestions for tweaks there as well. That probably wasn't the case 5 years ago though.
Editor setup
I use GNU Emacs from CVS (the "carbon emacs package" on the Apple site is similar) with Sepia and about a decade's worth of
.emacs hackery, and it was a narly-painless transition from Linux. I tried Aquamacs and found, while the font handling is better, most of the other changes are painful and break my customizations. I can't help you on the Vim side.
BBEdit, currently.
DAxelrod on 2007-02-06T21:46:29
I currently use and am very cozy in BBEdit (extended quite a bit with scripts I've written), and have heard nice things about TextMate, but haven't had a chance to check out TextMate yet.
If you're looking for more of an IDE, consider Affrus (review), which I also have not personally used.
Also, fontwise, use Monaco. 9 point aliased is pure bliss, but bigger is good too depending on your screen size.
Re: Perl development on OS X
Darth Ed on 2007-02-11T18:33:18
Responding to a month old journal entry. You've probably already found a set up that you like, but I thought I'd respond anyway.
There are lots of versions of Emacs for OS X out there. I tried several, but I wasn't really happy with any of them. So I used Darwinports to compile a recent, not-yet-released version of Emacs from the GNU CVS repository. Because I was coming from Linux, I configured it to use X11 for windowing. The result was an Emacs that works and looks exactly like Emacs on Linux. I definitely recommend checking out Darwinports, or fink another popular open source packaging system on OS X. I prefer Darwinports personally, but fink is more popular.
You could also use either Darwinports or fink to install a recent version of vim as well.
Hope this helps!
