[Idle-dev] idlefork update

[Stephen M. Gava]

Hi all,
as readers of the list may have noticed we now have a few active
developers on idlefork (hooray!) so I thought I'd post here to let those
interested know what's happening now on the project.

Basically, there are five main areas that need to be fully sorted out
before we can release the next stable idlefork version (of course we
plan to make some testing releases before that though). I'll briefly
detail these areas below.

The new RPC/SPE system
======================
Current state of implementation: about 55%

The Separate Process Execution code in idlefork is being moved into a
more general model that supports more required important features (like
debugging).

Chui Tey has already checked a first cut of the new code (based on an
implementation by GvR) into cvs and we are currently considering whether
to leave the old code on a branch and move forward with the new code on
the trunk or something similar.

As this is a fundamental area of the code which must be got right Kurt
B. Kaiser and Chui Tey are going to work on this in tandem to get it
sorted out, with Kurt initially working on stabilising and reversing the
role of the client and server and Chui helping out as his time permits.

Expect brokenness in cvs on the branch this code is being worked on in
(most likely the trunk, we'll let you know).

The new configuration system
============================
Current state of implementation: about 85%

I have about 5% implementation left to do on this (like moving the
autoindent code into idlefork core as discussed with GvR, and a few
other things), and then the 10% of 'finishing off', like stabilising,
debugging, tweaking etc., that always takes the most time.

The program startup mess
=========================
Current state of implementation: 0%

In the course of idlefork's development program startup code
(initialisation, commandline arg handling, user notification of said,
etc. ) has ended up spread through several modules, with some redundancy
and other 'uncleanness' resulting. Raymond Hettinger has volunteered to
work on cleaning this up and fixing it as his first task.

The run results/shell system
============================
Current state of implementation: 0%

The current code implements a system whereby results printed by code run
from the ide are printed in a separate 'output window' which is
delimited on each run. This could be better handled by integrating the
output window code with the python shell window, to improve
functionality and remove redundancy, so that results for run programs be
output to a real python shell window to allow interactive inspection of
results etc.. The results will have to be delimited in some way and
different outputs for code run from different editor windows handled.

Raymond has indicated that he is happy to have this as the third item on
his list if no-one else gets a chance to move onto this before then. 


The documentation/help situation
================================
Current state of implementation: 0%

This mainly comprises writing a new section of the standard python
documentation that covers idle(fork) and making that into the idlefork
help. (A simple version of this, for idle, has already made it into the
python docs now.) Another string to this bow is the possibility of
implementing context help lookup of python language elements from the
idlefork editor directly to the relevant section of the python help
files. This latter
is a considerably more ambitious undertaking that will likely best left
as a future improvement. The current help text is completely out of date
and useless and changing to presenting a python doc style html help
document will also make how help is browsed a no brainer. This is
something that has to be addressed
before we reach a real end user releasable state.
 
Raymond has claimed this as the number two item on his task list.


Ok, that's the sate of play. I'll update the 'Current Tasks' page on the
website when I get a chance. Now that there is more than one active
developer on the project we will be moving more of our discussion of
coding issues on to idle-dev so that it can be archived.

Regards,
Stephen.
-- 
Stephen M. Gava  <elguavas@users.sourceforge.net>
IDLEfork ( http://idlefork.sourceforge.net )  " just like IDLE, only
crunchy "