Crystal IDE

[hanyuone]

This is less of a library but more of a full-fledged application proposal.

This proposal has been stated before in other places, but I'm going to put it here.

Personally, I would prefer a full IDE as opposed to a plugin to something like RubyMine, but that is obviously much harder.

[HCLarsen]

Great idea, but one that would require at the very least a GUI, as is being discussed in another issue.

[hanyuone]

@HCLarsen I mean, it could be done with a language other than Crystal, but that wouldn't work as well as one that is written in Crystal.

[faustinoaq]

Maybe we can use QT preview by @Papierkorb to make a basic editor first, and then become it in an IDE.

[RX14]

I think creating a language server is the correct first step here. I personally don't see the point in having a different editor and IDE for each language. It's a waste of effort when there are many existing editors and IDEs which are much better and more mature than any new project started in crystal. For this reason, a language server represents the minimal amount of work needed to use IDE features with crystal: you can use the editor portion of an existing editor or IDE, and simply implement the crystal-specific portion. The language server protocol is fantastic because it supports multiple editors and multiple languages.

We already have scry, however it's alpha quality and needs a lot more work. The hardest thing to get working will be not breaking refactoring and inspection as soon as your code doesn't compile. In my opinion, all efforts should be focussed around this tool first instead of creating GUIs in crystal to do what has been done a thousand times before in other languages. After all, you're unlikely to get as many people to use your crystal IDE versus providing addons for their IDEs and editors they already know.

[waghanza]

I can only agree your point of view @RX14. Having yet an other IDE for crystal is just a wast of time.

However, I have (for a long time), the idea to write such an IDE (even before crystal was released).

I personally use vim for Ruby / Python / Crystal. As a text editor, this tool is enough for my use case.

But having a full-fledge innovation platform could be interesting. I mean an as flexible as vim tool. The main idea behind that is using one interface to :

• use a chat (gitter / discord / slack, whatsoever)
• write code with a vcs management (git / hg / darcs / bzr / monotone)
• create a cloud (public / private) infrastructure and deploy in it.

I think dealing with a language like crystal is interesting since plugin COULD be easily writeable (due to learning curve of crystal)

[j8r]

I've built a basic nano-like editor https://github.com/j8r/cride for those interested. I haven't much time to invest in it, but this may be the basis to an IDE or vim-like editor.