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Re: [photran] Where to focus development efforts
|
> For help in planning our official, Eclipse-approved, non-beta release of
> Photran later this year and future releases, we would like some input
> from the community.
>
>
> What functionality is most conspicuously missing from Photran?
>
> What existing features are sub-par?
>
> What can we do to make Photran more appealing and approachable to new users?
>
>
> I will send my own thoughts on these questions later: I would like to
> hear from others before biasing the discussion. Please reply to the
> entire list. Thanks in advance.
>
> Jeff Overbey
> _______________________________________________
> photran mailing list
> photran@xxxxxxxxxxx
> https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/photran
>
I feel like an absolute newcomer, both here, in the community, and related to
Fortran, more specifically: so I won't even try to go into the details of
things like "missing functionalities" or "existing features sub-par". I'll
try to focus on the "What can we do to make Photran more appealing and
approachable to new users" issue, instead.
I'd be very happy to delve into the issue of what functionalities are
currently missing and could be included in future releases, here... if I only
had been able to actually try Photran and go a little more deeper than the
pure scratching of its surface. But, as I've already said in a previous
message of mine, I've stumbled into problems from the very beginning.
I briefly recall them: first, the mere installation of Photran as a plugin in
Eclipse by the usual "find and install" function simply doesn't work, or at
least I haven't been able to make it work at all. Instead, one has to unzip
the package, and then to manually copy the features and the plugin elements
where they have to be stored: which, in my opinion, is done at the risk of
compromising the whole installation of the core. Something should be checked
here, then...
Second: after having nonetheless installed the plugin that way, I was
astonished in discovering that, when in the "so-modified" Eclipse I tried to
close any C/C++ project after having successfully built it, the new Eclipse
(or Photran) began to complain about "Synchronizing Photran VPG (Time of
error: dd month yyy hh:mm:ss) -- Reason:
org.eclipse.core.internal.resources.ResourceException: Resource
'/dir_of_the_project' is not open." In my opinion, quite a silly complain,
since *I was just trying to close the project*.
Honestly, it didn't look as one of those dramatic bugs that block a program
and suddenly turn it into an hindrance. However, just because I'm in the
beginning phase of my personal development as a (Fortran) coder, and I'm not
so well tempered, especially with this kind of issues, I've quickly removed
Photran from the machines I'm using (both under Windows and under Linux,
because that same problem used to pop up in both), and decided that I would
have been waiting some more time...
So, I deeply agree with Arjan: I think that, especially from the point of view
of a new user, every effort should be made to make Photran's first
installation and management as simple as possible, and maybe even simpler.
Under Windows, moreover, given the lack of good Fortran compilers, at the same
time free (for an independent coder this is a must, since the "standard"
compilers - Intel, Absoft, Lahey - are all commercial products and cost a lot
of bucks, as we all know) and Fortran 90/95-compliant (I think the time would
have come, for the MinGW developers team, to put out a *stable* release of
GCC 4.x.y, thus finally allowing the rest of us to seriously begin to code in
- at least - Fortran 90 *also under Windows*, without necessarily go into
debt for buying the Intel or Absoft compilers) I believe some effort should
be made, at least to create an installation utility capable of suggesting
what one should do, after installing the core of Photran, in order to have a
completely working package.
What's more, I also believe that the integration with the CDT should either be
worked out a little better, or be made as a pure option one can choose or
not, without necessarily being unable to code in Fortran for not choosing it.
And, as for the CDT plug-in: is it necessary to keep on distributing it with
the IBM-XL compilers functionality given by default as the main C/C++
toolchain available in the interface, instead of - here, too - allowing the
user to choose from the beginning the toolchain s/he wants to code with? It
would be yet another interesting option... if only the IBM-XL compilers could
be made available *also* as a free release, for, say, non-commercial
development (sort of what Intel does under Linux - too bad they don't do it
also under Windows, even if the reason for this can be easily understood ;-)
- or of what Sun does with the SunStudio Compilers).
However, I'd also be careful to avoid creating an Eclipse duplicate, only with
the Fortran functionality as sort of a "fringe benefit": if Photran wants to
gain some autonomous space and be self-sufficient, as an IDE, then it should
try to differentiate itself from Eclipse in some specific manner.
I close by saying that I believe there's the need of a very good free IDE for
Fortran, both under UNIX and under Windows. I hope Photran will be able to
play this role, as soon as possible :)
Hope this can help. Good luck and good work,
Schroeder