All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

Komodo, vs. KDevelop, vs. Eclipse ...

johanvdb on 2004-03-04T13:09:27

I wonder which IDE is the best to develop Perl projects ...

I've been working with eclipse lately, spitting out some java code, and I have to say I'm pretty amazed. It has these wonderfull search mechanisms, it can provide you automatically with the 'import' statements, integrated debugger, unit tests ... and it is free. Now, I just found out about the existence of e.p.i.c (Perl support for eclipse)

On the other hand, KDevelop seems to support Perl as well, but I do not know how far this goes.

I also know about the existence of Komodo, and which seems to sport a whole bunch of features ... but that is commercially available and a bit above my budget.

My Perl development setup is just vim, occasionally spiced up with 'perl -d', on a 80 char wide console. A bit archaic, but it serves me well.

However, i noticed that I have to walk alot through code finding class names, methods when a project gets rather big. If I could have a java/eclipse like behavior for Perl ... that would be an interesting feat ...

I'm off testing epic now ...

So, anybody here who has found the panacea of Perl IDEs?

Johan

Perl IDE's...

Lunchy on 2004-03-04T14:07:53

On Windows I've been using UltraEdit 32. I'm as much a UE32 zealot as I am a perl zealot. On linux however (which I've switched to in the last year), I haven't found anything I like as much as it...yet. However, I've been using KDevelop (3.0.x) which seems pretty impressive. However, my standards aren't very high, mainly, I just look for some good syntax highlighting. I'd guess you're looking for more... :)

A Common Perlmonks Question

ajt on 2004-03-04T14:41:29

This is one of the commonest questions over on Perlmonks. There are lots of threads, and everyone seems to have their own favourite. While it is nice to find something you like and are happy with, it's important to be able to use other tools too, you never know when you will need to use vi or notpad....

Emacs

mdxi on 2004-03-04T16:37:37

The Original IDE.

(X)Emacs

perrin on 2004-03-04T17:35:58

These are the things I want from an editor for perl code:

  • Auto-indent. Not the lame kind, but the kind that looks at your context to see if you are in the middle of a loop or a conditional and adjusts. Emacs is the only one I've seen do this right. All I ever do is hit tab and my code is properly indented.
  • Syntax highlighting. Must understand POD, recognize regexes, understand Perl's quoting. etc. None of them are perfect at this, but Emacs is the best I've seen.
  • Block comment/uncomment.
  • Re-flow comments that wrap lines. Emcas does this with Alt-Q.
There are other nice features in Emacs, like CVS integration, browse/edit remotely via FTP, debugger integration, and auto-completion, but honestly I don't use those much. I suspect vim has these too, but I can never get it out of beep mode.

All of the IDEs I've tried failed on the very first requirement: they suck at auto-indent. Eclipse is also slower than dirt, or was when I had to use it at work for some Java stuff last year.

Komodo

zatoichi on 2004-03-04T22:32:03

This looks like a good IDE. If I could *afford* it I would probably go for it. More so becuase the pro version has a Tk interface builder.

Re:Komodo

johanvdb on 2004-03-09T13:01:37

Well ... I do have komodo for the moment ...

Thanks to the sponsoring of ActiveState, I was able to buy it at the Dutch Perl Workshop auction, together with the Perl DevKit and a one year subscription to ASPN, for far less than the original price ;-)

So, hey ... my questions are answered ;-)

But ... in practice I seem to use vim a lot!

johan