Netbeans vs. Eclipse (was: Re: Complete D grammar)

[Bruno Medeiros]

On 04/04/2011 20:19, Aleksandar Ružičić wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 4, 2011 at 9:05 PM, Steven Schveighoffer
> <schveiguy at yahoo.com>  wrote:
>> >  On Mon, 04 Apr 2011 14:51:02 -0400, Aleksandar Ružičić
>> >  <ruzicic.aleksandar at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> >
>>> >>  On Mon, Apr 4, 2011 at 8:11 PM, Bruno Medeiros
>>> >>  <brunodomedeiros+spam at com.gmail>  wrote:
>>>> >>>
>>>> >>>  BTW, I wanna thank for this work (current and upcoming), it is likely
>>>> >>>  useful
>>>> >>>  for other IDE projects as well ;)
>>>> >>>
>>> >>
>>> >>  Ditto.
>>> >>
>>> >>  I have started work on D language support for NetBeans (IMHO it's MUCH
>>> >>  better editor than Eclipse) and started to write grammar for javaCC,
>>> >>  but since there is ongoing work on ANTLR parser I'll wait for that to
>>> >>  be done and integrate it into plugin I'm working on. :)
>> >
>> >  I would absolutely love NetBeans support for D.
>> >
>> >  -Steve
>> >

On my side I'm surprised NetBeans hasn't faded into obscurity, but I 
haven't tried it for a long, long time, so this isn't really an informed 
opinion.

So why is NetBeans much better editor than Eclipse? (I'm not just 
looking for a discussion, I'm curious about these issues as it might be 
something that can be taken into consideration for DDT development)


> Me too, so when I realized that no such project exists I've decided to
> write it my self (after all I write Java for few year now so I feel
> comfortable with it) but I knew that writing parser will take me most
> time and effort so it's great to see someone decided to write
> parser/grammar for ANTLR which can be used by other projects (in that
> way few IDEs could share same parser and focus on other parts of an
> IDE).

You can get started right away, no? The Descent parser has been isolated 
into its own bundle, which has no dependencies on Eclipse code or other 
third-party libraries (other than perhaps some assertion code, but all 
superficial dependencies that can be easily replaced).

The DDT DTool bundle 
(http://code.google.com/a/eclipselabs.org/p/ddt/source/browse/#hg%2Forg.dsource.ddt.dtool), 
which adds its own AST and semantic functionality like find-ref, code 
completion, etc., is also designed to be independent of Eclipse code, so 
you could use that as well, integrate it to NetBeans. In practice there 
is a non-trivial dependency here, but I plan to remove it soon, hopefully.


-- 
Bruno Medeiros - Software Engineer