Re: [photran] Where to focus development efforts

[Schroeder <jaygrey@xxxxxxxxx>]

> For help in planning our official, Eclipse-approved, non-beta release of 
> Photran later this year and future releases, we would like some input 
> from the community.
> 
> 
> What functionality is most conspicuously missing from Photran?
> 
> What existing features are sub-par?
> 
> What can we do to make Photran more appealing and approachable to new users?
> 
> 
> I will send my own thoughts on these questions later: I would like to 
> hear from others before biasing the discussion.  Please reply to the 
> entire list.  Thanks in advance.
> 
> Jeff Overbey
> _______________________________________________
> photran mailing list
> photran@xxxxxxxxxxx
> https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/photran
> 

I feel like an absolute newcomer, both here, in the community, and related to 
Fortran, more specifically: so I won't even try to go into the details of 
things like "missing functionalities" or "existing features sub-par". I'll 
try to focus on the "What can we do to make Photran more appealing and 
approachable to new users" issue, instead.

I'd be very happy to delve into the issue of what functionalities are 
currently missing and could be included in future releases, here... if I only 
had been able to actually try Photran and go a little more deeper than the 
pure scratching of its surface. But, as I've already said in a previous 
message of mine, I've stumbled into problems from the very beginning. 

I briefly recall them: first, the mere installation of Photran as a plugin in 
Eclipse by the usual "find and install" function simply doesn't work, or at 
least I haven't been able to make it work at all. Instead, one has to unzip 
the package, and then to manually copy the features and the plugin elements 
where they have to be stored: which, in my opinion, is done at the risk of 
compromising the whole installation of the core. Something should be checked 
here, then...

Second: after having nonetheless installed the plugin that way, I was 
astonished in discovering that, when in the "so-modified" Eclipse I tried to 
close any C/C++ project after having successfully built it, the new Eclipse 
(or Photran) began to complain about "Synchronizing Photran VPG (Time of 
error: dd month yyy hh:mm:ss) -- Reason: 
org.eclipse.core.internal.resources.ResourceException: Resource 
'/dir_of_the_project' is not open." In my opinion, quite a silly complain, 
since *I was just trying to close the project*.

Honestly, it didn't look as one of those dramatic bugs that block a program 
and suddenly turn it into an hindrance. However, just because I'm in the 
beginning phase of my personal development as a (Fortran) coder, and I'm not 
so well tempered, especially with this kind of issues, I've quickly removed 
Photran from the machines I'm using (both under Windows and under Linux, 
because that same problem used to pop up in both), and decided that I would 
have been waiting some more time...

So, I deeply agree with Arjan: I think that, especially from the point of view 
of a new user, every effort should be made to make Photran's first 
installation and management as simple as possible, and maybe even simpler.

Under Windows, moreover, given the lack of good Fortran compilers, at the same 
time free (for an independent coder this is a must, since the "standard" 
compilers - Intel, Absoft, Lahey - are all commercial products and cost a lot 
of bucks, as we all know) and Fortran 90/95-compliant (I think the time would 
have come, for the MinGW developers team, to put out a *stable* release of 
GCC 4.x.y, thus finally allowing the rest of us to seriously begin to code in 
- at least - Fortran 90 *also under Windows*, without necessarily go into 
debt for buying the Intel or Absoft compilers) I believe some effort should 
be made, at least to create an installation utility capable of suggesting 
what one should do, after installing the core of Photran, in order to have a 
completely working package.

What's more, I also believe that the integration with the CDT should either be 
worked out a little better, or be made as a pure option one can choose or 
not, without necessarily being unable to code in Fortran for not choosing it. 

And, as for the CDT plug-in: is it necessary to keep on distributing it with 
the IBM-XL compilers functionality given by default as the main C/C++ 
toolchain available in the interface, instead of - here, too - allowing the 
user to choose from the beginning the toolchain s/he wants to code with? It 
would be yet another interesting option... if only the IBM-XL compilers could 
be made available *also* as a free release, for, say, non-commercial 
development (sort of what Intel does under Linux - too bad they don't do it 
also under Windows, even if the reason for this can be easily understood ;-) 
- or of what Sun does with the SunStudio Compilers). 

However, I'd also be careful to avoid creating an Eclipse duplicate, only with 
the Fortran functionality as sort of a "fringe benefit": if Photran wants to 
gain some autonomous space and be self-sufficient, as an IDE, then it should 
try to differentiate itself from Eclipse in some specific manner.

I close by saying that I believe there's the need of a very good free IDE for 
Fortran, both under UNIX and under Windows. I hope Photran will be able to 
play this role, as soon as possible :)

Hope this can help. Good luck and good work,

Schroeder