FreeRIDE project - Call for help

[Laurent Julliard]

All,

Since its inception in September 2001, FreeRIDE, the 100% Ruby IDE,
has made a lot of progress (http://freeride.rubyforge.org). The
current version has quite a large number features and, above all, the
underlying plugin architecture (FreeBASE databus) has proven to be
stable and perfectly suited for this type of application.

As of today, Curt Hibbs and I are the only active project members with
Curt focusing on the delivery of the Windows installer and myself on
the software development activities. FreeRIDE has reached a point
where it has plenty of nice features that makes it appealing but it
also has weaknesses that can be (really) annoying.

Most notably we are looking for help in the following areas:

- Documentation: FreeRIDE has a user guide but it is quite outdated. I
have just started revamping it but I definitely need help in this
area. It's not a big thing as FreeRIDE is quite easy to use. In a
second step the user guide needs a better integration in FreeRIDE.
This means deciding on a format that is suitable for online publishing
and viewing within the FOX framework.

- Windows platform: this is where the most urgent need is. I am mostly
a Linux developer and although I'm doing some testing on Win XP
(through VMware), FreeRIDE is less stable on
Windows than on Linux. For instance we need to improve the debugger,
the script runner by making a batter use of the Windows Operating
system capabilities, removing slowness in some places... Win2K
and Win XP are the target platforms.

- MacOSX platform: there has been some attempt lately to deliver a
FreeRIDE installer for MacOSX but I need an active person in the core
team responsible for driving the MacOSX community and organizing the
work and/or building the MacOSX installer like Curt does for Windows
and I do for Linux.

- Testing, testing, testing...: testers are
badly needed. By testers I mean people that use FreeRIDE but are also
willing to identify the root cause of a bug and fix it. I use FreeRIDE
myself for FreeRIDE development but I tend to always do the same
operations which is not o good way of testing.

If you are interested in helping us then drop me a mail telling me
where you want to contribute and subscribe to the FreeRIDE developers
mailing list (see http://rubyforge.org/mail/?group_id=31). Working on
FreeRIDE is a lot of fun and it is extremelly rewarding because as a
Ruby developer you'll be improving a tool that makes Ruby programming
even more fun.

Thanks for all your help!

Laurent Julliard

 

[Ben Giddings]

- Testing, testing, testing...: testers are
badly needed. By testers I mean people that use FreeRIDE but are also
willing to identify the root cause of a bug and fix it. I use FreeRIDE
myself for FreeRIDE development but I tend to always do the same
operations which is not o good way of testing.

Ok, I use Emacs with ruby-mode. I've looked at FreeRIDE before, but I'm
not sure what there is there that would make me want to use it instead
of Emacs.

You might get more people to help out with testing if you could provide
some compelling reasons why they should use FreeRIDE. Even if those
features are, as yet, over the horizon. If I knew I could have a Ruby
editor with all the keystrokes of Emacs, but customizable in Ruby
instead of lisp, I'd jump in a second... but it doesn't look like that's
what FreeRIDE is, or what it aims to be.

So, what's your sales pitch?

Ben

 

[Hal Fulton]

Ok, I use Emacs with ruby-mode. I've looked at FreeRIDE before, but I'm
not sure what there is there that would make me want to use it instead
of Emacs.

You might get more people to help out with testing if you could provide
some compelling reasons why they should use FreeRIDE. Even if those
features are, as yet, over the horizon. If I knew I could have a Ruby
editor with all the keystrokes of Emacs, but customizable in Ruby
instead of lisp, I'd jump in a second... but it doesn't look like that's
what FreeRIDE is, or what it aims to be.

So, what's your sales pitch?

Offhand, integrated dubugging. But you probably have something working in
emacs as well.

Frankly, I'd be interested in an emacs mode even though I don't use emacs.
And I have done some work along the lines of programming Scintilla with a
nice Ruby API. See my 2003 RubyConf presentation (somewhat out of date wrt
refactoring, as we now have rrb, I guess).

http://hypermetrics.com/rubyhacker/ff/slide01.html (esp. slides 6 and 8)

Hmm, it's way past time to polish that code and release it.

I'll add it to my todo list.


Hal

 

[Ben Giddings]

Offhand, integrated dubugging. But you probably have something working in
emacs as well.

No, I just write perfect code.

Frankly, I'd be interested in an emacs mode even though I don't use emacs.

To be clear, you mean a FreeRIDE mode that makes it seem like Emacs?

And I have done some work along the lines of programming Scintilla with a
nice Ruby API. See my 2003 RubyConf presentation (somewhat out of date wrt
refactoring, as we now have rrb, I guess).

So that API would allow (easy?) keybindings from FreeRIDE, making Emacs
emulation possible?

Ben

 

[Hal Fulton]

To be clear, you mean a FreeRIDE mode that makes it seem like Emacs?

Yes, but I'd also favor "hooks" into FR for the emacs gurus who want to
control it via emacs.

So that API would allow (easy?) keybindings from FreeRIDE, making Emacs
emulation possible?

In theory, yes. In practice I wasn't thinking of editor emulation, but
just the ability to write sophisticated scripts.

It's been months since I looked at it, and I can't recall how easy/hard
it would be to associate keybindings.


Hal

 

[Laurent Julliard]

Ok, I use Emacs with ruby-mode. I've looked at FreeRIDE before, but I'm
not sure what there is there that would make me want to use it instead
of Emacs.

Integrated debugger and script runner, easy to navigate Class
browser... and soon (in 0.9.4) the integrated Ruby documentation which
will allow you to get instant help on any class or method definition
you are typing in the editor. I am already addicted to it...

Collaborative programming is also something that we have on our radar
but nobody has taken over this task for now. it's a shame because that
is really an exciting one that I have not seen in anyother IDE
(ruby or not) so far.

You might get more people to help out with testing if you could provide
some compelling reasons why they should use FreeRIDE. Even if those
features are, as yet, over the horizon. If I knew I could have a Ruby
editor with all the keystrokes of Emacs, but customizable in Ruby
instead of lisp, I'd jump in a second... but it doesn't look like that's
what FreeRIDE is, or what it aims to be.

If only I had more contributors to FreeRIDE, customizable key-bindings
would have been done long ago. There is however a limitation in the
Scintilla editor that command keys can only be one key. Emacs uses a
lot of double key commands which Scintilla does not support.

Want to join and make a difference ?

Laurent

 

[Laurent Julliard]

(privmsg as at work)




i'm interested in this. how can i download the version in which this is
possible?

You can get it from CVS directly. Go to
http://rubyforge.org/scm/?group_id=31 and follwo th instruction

does it have a good cocoa frontend or at least pluggable frontends? i'd
be possibly
interested in making a qtruby4 frontend.

On MacOSX it runs with the X Window server. It's a native Cocoa interface.

can the raw key events be caught and translated instead?
is the editor component pluggable? are the api's in freeride
scintilla specific or could an alternative editor frontend and
main frontend be plugged in?

Right now there is no abstraction layer for the editor it's direclty
plugged in Scintilla

i'd like to make ruvi a component for freeride if possible.
there's no way that i'll find enough time to work on ruvi seriously
in the future and there's a lot of work in aeditor and freeride
and ruvi that i'd really love to reuse to make a kick ass
vim oriented ide with good documentation / irb integration



i'd *really* like to, tho i'm already very busy with other stuff, thusly
please excuse
me for the questions that i could likely answer for myself given some
more time...
hope you can don't mind

Alex

--
Laurent JULLIARD
Xerox Global Services
Business Process Services
Manager, Smart Documents Platforms
Tel: +33 (0)4 76 61 50 48
Fax: +33 (0)4 76 61 51 99

 

[Gavin Kistner]

Collaborative programming is also something that we have on our radar
but nobody has taken over this task for now. it's a shame because that
is really an exciting one that I have not seen in anyother IDE (ruby
or not) so far.

Might not be called an IDE, but if you haven't already, you should play
with SubEthaEdit along with a friend on MacOS. It's really quite
amazing, the way it handles the interface for multiple people working
on the same document at the same time.

http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/

 

[Javier Valencia]

Might not be called an IDE, but if you haven't already, you should
play with SubEthaEdit along with a friend on MacOS. It's really quite
amazing, the way it handles the interface for multiple people working
on the same document at the same time.

http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/

there is also MoonEdit, and other projects in python that offer
collaborative edition

 

[Bill Guindon]

Might not be called an IDE, but if you haven't already, you should play
with SubEthaEdit along with a friend on MacOS. It's really quite
amazing, the way it handles the interface for multiple people working
on the same document at the same time.

http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/

And for x86 machines, there's http://www.moonedit.com
It's quite weak on the "editor" side, but strong on "collaborative".

I'm hoping that FreeRIDE is modeled after these, and not the "Pair
programming" model of swapping editors. Merging FreeRIDE's editing
with SubEthaEdit/MoonEdit collaboration would be a killer app.

 

[Chuck Brotman]

I would like to help with FreeRIDE. Probably could help most in
Documentation (to start).
Will write more about myself when I see this make it to the mailing list...
(it's my third try...)