ActiveState releases Komodo for GNU/Linux

TorinEdge writes "ActiveState has finally released (as in out of Beta) their Komodo IDE for the GNU/Linux platform! Komodo is an integrated dev environment for open source languages. It provides colour-coded editing (and "code-folding" for collapsing sections of code), debugging etc... It's optimized for Perl, Python, PHP, Tcl, and XSLT. Includes the RxToolkit for testing/checking your regular expressions; a godsend. Get it while it's hot!"

Re:What the ??!?

[rickms]

Just becase it's not free means that /. can't talk about it? Last I checked it was "News for Nerds", not "News about open-souce/Free Softward for Nerds" Comon... Rick

Why oh why

[GusherJizmac]

How many times in the history of mankind must syntax highlighting and folding be implemented in a code editor? Why can't all these IDE makers just use Vim (or even Emacs, or how about either?) as their code editor? I mean, emacs and vim are about a zillion times more powerful and feature-packed than any crappy IDE editor. What's the deal? It doesn't seem hard to just have the IDE contain a curses or terminal emulation layer where you can run a real editor, instead of these crappy knock-offs. It also would seem to be MUCH easier to do that rewriting an editor from scratch, yet again. Ugh.

Re:Why oh why

[Anonymous Coward]

Hint: The 'I' in IDE stands for 'integrated'. running vi or emacs doesn't allow the close integration that their own editor allows.
It's more than syntax coloring and automatic indenting; Komodo does stuff like showing function parameters and return types, object/class methods, displaying the compiled asm code intermixed with the source code, and a bunch of other things that vi(m) or emacs dont' do, or can't be integrated into.

If you want, though, Komodo does allow you to use a different editor.

PS - Komodo is a commercial product, so GPL viralness may also be a factor.

Re:Why oh why

[GusherJizmac]

The point is, why don't they use those editors as their basis for their integrated editor? Why re-invent the wheel so many times? Clearly, people won't use an IDE because of the superior text/code editing abilities; vim and emacs beat them all hands down. I understand they may not want to release their product as open-source and that may be a factor, but I guess it's a larger issue. Look at freshmeat and see how many IDEs there are, and how many "programmer's editors" there are. Seems like an awful waste of time and talent.

Re:Eclipse?

[fava]

Actually from reviewing the Eclipse website it seems that none of these languages are currently supported nor does there seem to be any projects aimed at any of these languages. I will admit there could be some discussion on the mailing lists, I did not check those.

Eclipse seems to be mostly concerned with Java and a little bit of C/C++ and cobol.

What I really need is...

[cornice]

What I really need is an IDE that helps me manage projects but has support for xemacs, gvim or whatever happens to be the best editor today. I know there is another post like this labeled as flaim bait but I think that recreating the editor is a mistake. That's one area where there are fast, mature, time tested, extensible options. We need more IDEs that recognize this and solve the project management issues that exist rather than waste time on the parts that are already done right.

Re:Why oh why

[Twirlip of the Mists]

The point is, why don't they use those editors as their basis for their integrated editor? Why re-invent the wheel so many times?

Excellent question. The answer is: the GPL.

Emacs is released under the GPL. VIM is released under a license that is, for all intents and purposes, just like the GPL. (They call it "GPL-compatible.") The restrictions placed on developers by the GPL make it impossible for a commercial concern to use either of these programs, or components of them, as part of an IDE.

If FooCorp, or whomever, wanted to develop an IDE using the VIM editor as the embedded source code editor and glomming on IDE features, they would be required, under the VIM license, to release the source code for their IDE. Nobody in his right mind would want to do that, so as a result every IDE has to have its own editor.

If they released the VIM editor under the BSD license, this problem would not exist.