Release Digest: GNOME, August 10, 2003

This is a minor update over 2.3.6. The major difference is that
there is more checking of GConf return values. The only user
visible changes should be a new README file and translation
updates.

There are still some bugs that it would be nice to have resolved
by 2.4, if they can be reproduced. Aside from them, this is
essentially 2.4.0.

Scaffold 0.1

Hi,

What is it?

Scaffold (formerly known as anjuta2) is a GNOME based
Development Environment (IDE). A scaffold is a support structure
used during construction.

This is a _DEVELOPMENT_ release which requires the GNOME 2.3
platform. Use at your own risk etc. The main goal of this release
is to get more exposure and hopefully more people helping out with
the development. Even though this is a development release, the
program itself is already quite stable and is used by various
people already to develop their programs.

The goal of Scaffold is to provide the GNOME developers an
integrated environment in which they can develop (primarily) GNOME
programs. To this end, Scaffold uses various GNOME (based)
technologies:

Glimmer: a bonobo editor component based on GtkSourceView for
displaying syntax-highlighted documents.
Gnome-build: a GObject-based framework for managing projects
and specifically automake/conf-based projects.
Gdl: a support library providing common widgets and objects
such as a docking widget, symbol browser and various other small
utility objects.

What can it do?

>From the bottom up, Scaffold uses a plugin system where
everything except an empty main window is implemented using
plugins. This allows users to load/unload plugins on-the-fly. The
two main plugins are the document-manager and the
project-manager.

The document-manager can display a document using any of the
bonobo components on the system which support the mimetype. An
example of this is that you can use the Eye Of Gnome (eog)
component to display a .png file.

The project-manager uses the automake/conf backend in
gnome-build to open projects and add/remove files to/from it.
Gnome-build does not store its own copy of the project: it parses
the configure.in and Makefile.am files to build an internal XML
representation of the project.
The current backend is designed to be as little intrusive as
possible. When the user edits the project, a script analyzes the
project files and makes small changes in a line by line basis, such
that the final result is nearly the same as what you would have
done manually.

Version 0.1 also contains some other minor plugins like text,
shell-output, symbol-browser and a terminal plugin. There are other
plugins (like a devhelp plugin), but those are not in use and need
work.

Don’t we already have anjuta/Eclipse?

In the beginning, there was gIDE. Then later on anjuta appeared.
At one point a merger between these two projects was announced:
anjuta2.. Unfortunately, the merge never really happened due to
lack of interest and the Anjuta team decided to go for a GNOME2
port instead. So recently we changed the name of the project from
anjuta2 to scaffold to avoid any confusion in the name and distance
us from it. On a technical level, scaffold uses a plugin-based
architecture wich allows for far more flexibility than anjuta, but
still lacks in functionality compared to anjuta. This will
hopefully change as more people help out (This means YOU! 😉 ).
Scaffold also holds the HIG in high regard.

Eclipse is also a plugin-based framework, but more focused on
Java development and less so on GNOME2. Scaffold is from the ground
up a GNOME2 project, with use of GConf, libglade, GtkSourceView,
GdlDock etc.

What can I work on?

There’s lots of work left to do, as we lack a lot of
functionality and IDE-must-have features. Here’s a rather ambitious
list of things interested people can work on:

Major:
- Rewrite gnome-debug (Debugger!) to GNOME2 and make it use the
  GDB Machine Interface (?) like Eclipse does. Perhaps look at the
  new Mono debugger to see if that can be used as well for
  non-managed apps.
- Version Control System framework (gnome-vcs?) and specifically
  a CVS backend.
- Implement more backends for gnome-build (perhaps an Ant
  (http://ant.apache.org)
  backend), finish the automake/conf backend.
- Support for “CodeInsight” popups and tooltips in glimmer
  (requires GtkSourceView work).
- Code folding (again, requires work in
  GtkSourceView/GtkTextView).
- Glade integration (glade3 is much more componentized and the
  developers are willing to work with us to get it integrated in
  Scaffold).
- Allow plugins to be written in Python and C# (Mono)
- Integration of tools such as memprof, valgrind/alleyoop.
Minor:
- The docking widget needs a better titlebar for dock items.
- Devhelp plugin needs work to work with the latest devhelp.
- Help/yelp plugin/documentation.
- TODO plugin (perhaps integrate it with mrproject somehow).
- Additional editors such as a GConf Schema editor (so you don’t
  have to edit the plain XML).
- Add more .lang files for syntax highlighting in GtkSourceView
  (C# for example).
- GObject wizard plugin: easy tool to create a new GObject
  derived class instead of copy/pasting/writing it yourself.
- Symbol browser needs serious love.
- Bugzilla integration (probably requires newer bugzilla with
  some sort of web service/XML SOAP support).
- Desktop integration (when we have debugging working, make the
  crash dialog have a button to open the application in scaffold for
  example).
- Bug fixes.

Discussion either takes place on the devtools mailing list
(http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-devtools)
or in the #devel-apps channel on irc.gnome.org/.

Where can I get it?

In order to build & run, you need the following modules (in
that order):

GNOME 2.3 platform
GDL 0.4.0
GtkSourceView 0.5.0
Glimmer 1.99.0
Gnome-build 0.1.0
Scaffold 0.1.0

Scaffold only depends on GDL and Gnome-build. Glimmer is a
runtime dependency (it needs a bonobo editor component).

You can download these modules from a GNOME ftp mirror: http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gdl/0.4/

http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gtksourceview/0.5/

http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/glimmer/1.99/

http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gnome-build/0.1/

http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/scaffold/0.1/

Thanks to Gustavo Giráldez for helping out with the
release notes.

Regards,

Jeroen

Release Digest: GNOME, August 10, 2003

libgexecutor 0.1.1

Application

Description

Enhancements

Download

GNOME Software Map entry

gThumb 2.1.4

Application

Description

Download

GNOME Software Map entry

gURLChecker 0.6.0-pre4

Application

Description

Enhancements

Fixes

Download

GNOME Software Map entry

gnome-games 2.3.7

gnome-games “Carisbrook” 2.3.7

Scaffold 0.1

What is it?

What can it do?

Don’t we already have anjuta/Eclipse?

What can I work on?

Where can I get it?

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