Is there a single working OCaml IDE? - ide

I have downloaded multiple OCaml IDE's / plugins and NONE of them work. I have no clue if I have a directory problem or if something else is at fault. I can access the OCaml console through cygwin just fine but it is not very useful for dealing with larger files. I am a total OCaml noob and have no clue how to fix my problems. I have been reading every post on OCaml here and nothing is helping. I am hoping that somebody can help me because this is very frustrating! Thanks to all who reply.

OCaml modes for Emacs and Vim work perfectly (and they run on MacOS and Windows, of course). I heard Geany works well as well.
I'm not saying everyone must learn Emacs and Vim; I understand that it's a kind of interface that beginners maybe don't want to get into -- and supporting other editors well for OCaml is a problem that we need to fix. But if you want reasonable support for pretty much every kind of text format out there, they're still good choices.
Finally, if you have a decent terminal / command-line (if you are on Windows that might require running a GNU/Linux virtual machine), pretty much every editor will be fine if you compile stuff by hand from the terminal (which is not particularly hard). In-Editor support will still provide you with a better experience, in particular allowing to jump right to the place in your code where the compiler says there is an error, but as a beginner you can go a long way without even that.
PS: it would be extremely useful if you took the time to spell out precisely what your problem with each tool was, and send that information to the respective maintainers. I think the main problem with these tools is the lack of testers. Help the future people that will try these tools by helping the maintainers fix them!

I'v recently looked at OcaIDE for eclipse - and it seems to work.
You need perhaps set some configuration variables (paths to ocaml compiler,...), but I don't remember any quirks.

I would like to thank everybody for their help. I finally found some installation instructions for the tuareg mode in EMACS. In case anybody else is having the same problem that I was there are VERY clear instructions here
How to install tuareg
Hopefully I can now translate some stuff into OCaml that I have been working on in other languages and post some of my projects. Thanks again for all of the help.

You can use Notepad++ for Windows. It is more intuitive for than Vim or Emacs for the beginners. And it has a syntax highlighting for Caml and you can assign hotkeys for compiling executing the program.

I would suggest using OcaIDE. I've done some fairly large projects with it, and it's not bad. Emacs (with Tuareg mode) is also a good option. If you're having trouble with setup, I wrote a guide for OS X: http://www.princeton.edu/~crmarsh/ocaml_dev_environment/

Related

PHPStorm for Hack Language

I am kinda of a new user here and don't have enough reputation points to comment/ask on this question: IDE support for Hack Lang.
So, I am hoping that since the last entry provided by Themis Beris someone has been able to get PHPStorm working properly with Hack. I followed the 3 steps described in the post I mentioned, but still get compile-time errors on the classes I've written using Hack. <?hh is not recognized, for instance.
Any suggestions as to how to get PHPStorm playing nice with Hack?
I have no idea what Themis Beris is talking about on the linked question. (He seems to be saying something about PHPUnit, which is a completely separate issue.)
JetBrains has a feature request open for Hack support and last I heard was very actively working on it. But as of this writing (Feb 2015) it's not released yet.

Why should I switch to an IDE?

I've been programming in python and C for a little less than a year, now. I switched from OSX to Ubuntu about a month ago. I'm learning C++, and most specific (non-beginner, I.E.: an SFML tutorial I'm using) tutorials that I've seen talk as if I use an IDE. I've used Textwrangler (OSX), gedit (Linux), and nano (Both; With built-in syntax highlighting and other extras turned on) for programming, along with the terminal and "make" so far, and I'm perfectly happy with them. I would use emacs, but I really don't like the way it looks. Should I use an IDE for C++? If so, why? Honestly, I'm just scared of being a ctrl-space'ing heathen. Thank you for any responses, and take the previous sentence with a grain of salt.
Short answer: Use an IDE if you feel comfortable with one. Don't use an IDE if you don't feel comfortable with one.
To really answer this question, though, we should probably look what using an IDE gets you. Here's the Visual Studio interface for C++:
(source: msdn.com)
The first thing you notice, of course, is the code windows with the pretty highlights. However, that's not the IDE; that's just the text editor part. The rest of it is what's really important. Visual Studio includes a debugger, a file/project manager, a compiler, support for source control... the list goes on. The first letter of "IDE" is the most important one - integrated. It includes everything you need to develop in one neat package.
However, this has its downsides, too. Maybe you don't like VS's text editor. Then, you have to have two windows open, and use the IDE only for debugging, compiling, and source control, wasting most of the screen space. Maybe, after a while, you start to think maybe GCC optimizes your code better, so you start using that. Eventually, the "integrated" part of IDE goes out of the window, and you're using only a few features of the product. At that point, it might be more productive just to find replacements for everything.
Of course, there are extensions and plugins for some of these things, but the point is: an IDE is generally only useful if you spend all or most of your time in it. If you like the entire or most of the IDE, great. If you don't, then use something else, whether that's another IDE or a bunch of command line tools or something else.
Addendum: I used to use Visual Studio, and then moved to Linux with Vim, gcc, and gdb. I work with SFML a fair amount in personal projects, and I don't feel that an IDE is especially suited to it in any particular way; I do just fine with the command line tools. The tutorials are most likely written that way because most people begin coding with an IDE, and SFML attracts a lot of beginners.

D language dev environment

What is the current state of the art development environment for the D language?
I know about DDT for eclipse, Visual D and Codeblocks. Each has its disadvantages - DDT doesn't have a debugger, Visual D is for windows (and Visual Studio) and CodeBlocks doesn't have emacs keys bindings and I have some bad memories about it from my CS intro days.
Using tools like emacs + gdb is good enough for simple programs but when the code gets bigger I find it really hard to get around the code just with emacs. Without smart code completion and code layout (meaning, list of all functions/classes in a file) it gets really tedious and I feel I spend way too much time struggling with the editor instead of just writing the code I want to write.
Additionally, with Java+eclipse for example I have this neat documentation popup window whenever I mouse over a method/class. I find this extremely helpful, and really miss it when working in emacs.
And debugging with gdb is really just... antiquated.
So, for the love of god, save me from the 1970s! :)
Although, any tips concerning emacs and gdb (if nothing else exists) would be appreciated.
Have you looked at Mono-D?
Further, Sublime Text 2 has pretty good D support. I also maintain an improved highlighter for it.
I switched from Code::Blocks to Mono-D half year ago. However, there is a new kid on the block NetbeansD. For simple stuff Geany and Kate have enough support. :)
All this said, Mono-D beats all competitors at the moment, so try that one first.
Doesn't Emacs have GDB integration that allow you to do stepthough and add brakepoints - all in emacs?
I would suggest you try to configure your Emacs.
I also suggest using a good build tool(I use Rake when I program in Vim, but Emacs might have an elisp build tool), and the ctags and cscope really help in mapping big projects.

How to practice HAML and SASS (environment)

Could you please give me advice how its better to practice HAML and SASS.
I`ve downloaded and installed everything for windows and i can compile files and use it via command line. But still i want to be able to code and browse it at once, not writing anything in command line.
I mean what shall i do on my localhost to use it? Am i to use with any kind of engine, Drupal for example. Or is there a more simple way?
Thanks in advance!
I have recently discovered a free online SASS/SCSS-HAML editor, named Voyage, developed by Zhi-Qiang Lei (thanks!). Very useful for beginners to practice, and for everyone to test snippets quickly.
http://voyage-editor.herokuapp.com/
Hope it helps
Ok so, for Sass and Compass, you can always use the --watch flag to watch the modified files and recompile them on the go.
Now I reckon this doesn't account for HAML wich doesn't have a --watch flag, or other languages such as CoffeeScript etc. The best solution for the moment for a stable and easy to work with environment is to use an external software that will do the command line work for you.
There are several out there, I've tried out a few of them — depending on your current platform and how much you want to put in (from 0$ to 9$). I don't know a lot of free preprocessors manager so if people want to go and comment with free alternatives I'd be glad.
The best in my humble opinion is LiveReload because it's what I've tested to be the most permissive in your organization, it compiles fast, reloads your browser on change, etc.
Cons are it's best to use it on a Mac, considering the Windows version is still in beta and far from finished. But if you're on a Mac, to me it's definitely the way to go.
You can use FireApp too, it does the same job but it's a little less permissive. There are things you can't do with your Compass configuration files, folders you have to name a certain way, etc. It's also paying, but it's cross-plateform (coded in JRuby).
On the free side of life, you currently have CodeKit for Mac but it's free only during the beta and will become paying. On the other hand it's really worth it's money for how well executed it is and it will really make your life simpler.
You can probably go look on the internet for similar softwares, but you get the idea. Currently the best way to have an easy to use work environment while avoiding the command line is to go through those kinds of softwares.

A good editor/add-on for Sproutcore?

Is there a good editor/ide/add-on for sproutcore out there?
I use Jetbrains WebStorm.
Good support for js, not SC specific, but somehow it does very good highlighting for SC as wel and syntax errors.
Also not heavyweight (read slow).
I like it very much, tried a couple of other before.
Intype is also nice, less syntax help and other features.
E-text editor is windows version of Textmate with less features, more mature then Intype.
TextMate has a SproutCore bundle which is helpful - at the very least it runs JSLint on your .js files at save time, which stops a lot of basic syntax errors.
I use intellij. you can ctrl-click into most methods, and the warnings that it provides are close to what jslint will give you. You can also autocomplete.
I'm using JetBrains Ruby Mine. It's pretty smart. Coding hinting has built in integration got GitHub and from what I can tell pretty light weight. Refactoring is pretty awesome too. One of the best I've seen.