Visual Cobra Express download package now available

[matstraw]

Just a quick note to let everyone know that the standalone IDE for Cobra (based on, but independent of, Microsoft Visual Studio) is now available as a download package from https://github.com/pxc/VisualCobra/downloads. Apologies to anyone who had trouble installing earlier versions from the source files; these problems have now been fixed.

There are two files. If you don't already have the Visual Studio Standalone Shell installed then you'll want the larger of these.

Detailed installation instructions are available inside the zip.

At the moment, Visual Cobra Express only really offers syntax highlighting for Cobra, the benefits of Visual Studio's text editor and a basic way to run the current file through the Cobra executable. There's a lot more that could be done to make it more rounded. I'd be delighted if some more people could get involved -- it's written in C# in Visual Studio 2010. Drop me a line if you're interested, or take a look at the code on Github.

Thanks and best wishes,
Matthew

[nerdzero]

Hi Matthew,

I'm working on the Cobra addin for MonoDevelop. Maybe we could figure out some way to share some code or common functionality. Maybe a 'Cobra.Ide.dll' library or something?

[matstraw]

Hi,

Thanks for getting in touch. It would certainly be good to share some common code, although I'm not sure how much the two GUIs have in common (Visual Studio has a very particular way of doing things). That said, there's doubtless some utility functions, templates, etc. we could share.

Cheers,
Matthew

[nerdzero]

... I'm not sure how much the two GUIs have in common (Visual Studio has a very particular way of doing things).

Yeah, same with MonoDevelop. I'm working on creating folding regions right now and it seems like that could possibly be abstracted from the IDE.

torial, Naja supports folding regions right?

[Charles]

I'm especially curious if anything can be shared regarding autocompletion/intellisense.

And also eager to use such a feature.

[nerdzero]

Yes, me too

[torial]

Regarding folding regions -- yeah, Naja supports it. The original (pre-rewrite) used a hack approach (worked from the bottom of the code up, it simplified a number of issues -- not a full parser though-- RIGHT_THEN went the full parser route). Not sure if the rewrite used a different mechanism (I changed text editors) -- haven't looked at code in a few months.

What is the current state of everyone's Autocomplete logic? I have a rudimentary approach -- it currently only loaded the info from the project references, not anything from existing Cobra or C# files. If that'd be useful, I'd be happy to pass it on.

[nerdzero]

Autocomplete in the early versions of the MD addin from the 'experimental' branch did the implicit references from Cobra plus all keywords. It wasn't context aware though so it would propose stuff that wasn't always useful. I stopped working in that branch as soon as I got a "proof of concept" that showed class members for the last class defined in the current file. That branch is an unusable hard-coded mess though as it was basically just a brain-dump while I familiarized myself with the MonoDevelop and NRefactory libraries. I use it for reference now. Anyways, I wouldn't mind seeing what you have so far. I'm guessing it's reflection based?

Also, I checked out your folding region code. I like how clean it is. Mine is getting quite hairy as I'm trying to handle all possible cases (dedented comment blocks inside other blocks, doc strings, etc.) Personally, I really just want to be able to fold tests out of the way. Perhaps I should rethink my strategy...

[torial]

Nerdzero - do you have an easy way for me to send code to you? I'd prefer to not just paste it in. I'm not ready to upload the latest source to my Naja Codeplex account -- as I was in the middle of numerous changes -- but will happily send you my AutoComplete library

[Charles]

A public dropbox directory? (or similar service)