1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
|
<HTML>
<HEAD><TITLE>More about Motor</TITLE></HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR=White>
<TABLE BORDER=0>
<TR><TD></TD><TD WIDTH="60%">
<H2>Introduction</H2>
<P ALIGN="justify">
In this article I will try to cover new features appeared in motor after
2.6.3 version release. I gonna tell you why I decided to implement them
and why you may feel need for them. This article can be considered as a
status report easily.
</P>
<H2>What is motor? (if you still don't know)</H2>
<P ALIGN="justify">
Motor is an IDE for Linux that works in the console and provides the
developer with a useful mcedit-like editor, front-ends to the compiler,
linker, debugger (gdb), concurrent version system (cvs), ctags, rpm,
automake/autoconf and other useful things. It can also generate
distribution packages in any format. Almost everything is done with
templates, so any kind of language or distribution can be added easily.
</P>
<H2>The new features as they are</H2>
<H3>Autoconf/automake support</H3>
<P ALIGN="justify">
As autoconf/automake is a de-facto standard for Linux packages, I've
been planning to implement support for it in motor for a long time. And
now it's finally done. Most of files needed by automake are generated
and updated by a script that resides inside Makefile.func (see below).
</P>
<P ALIGN="justify">
Using automake gives a developer a bunch of benefits such as automatic
dependency tracking, ready-to-use standard Makefile targets such as
"dist" to generate a tar.gz distribution package, "all" to build the
binaries, "clean" and "distclean" to clear generated stuff, etc. So it
must have been supported by motor a long ago. Bad luck, I haven't got
enough time to implement it before.
</P>
<P ALIGN="justify">
To use automake/autoconf with a project you write with motor, you are
simply to set "makefile mode" to "automake" value on project creation.
If you decided to migrate an existing one to automake, the option is
accessible in the "project settings" dialog. It happens sometimes some
of your Makefile.am's are accidentaly removed or broken. In this case
motor has a facility to regenerate it. This can be achieved with
selecting the "Project->Regen. build stuff" menu item. You might also
need to change something in your Makefile.am's or configure.in. All the
files can be found in the "Build stuff" folder of the "Project files"
dialog.
</P>
<H3>Gettext support</H3>
<P ALIGN="justify">
Another intresting feature motor 2.15.7 and later versions have. It's
the gettext support. GNU gettext is a localization library designed
specially to make Linux programs as well as other GNU software speak
various languages. Any language can be supported just with putting a
single file to the special directory.
</P>
<P ALIGN="justify">
Now, how it works with motor. Please note that it requires you to be
quite familiar with gettext itself. You can turn on or off the feature
with the "Use GNU gettext for internationalization" item either in the
"Create a new project" window or in the "Project settings" dialog.
</P>
<P ALIGN="justify">
But turning the option on is not enough. Now you gotta create at least
one translation file so gettext stuff is to be included into your
project. For example, you are going to translate it into Russian (aren't
you? :) yourself. Open the "Project files" dialog, and add a file named
"po/ru.po" to the "Miscellaneous files" folder. As soon as the dialog is
closed, all the necessary programs are ran and two directories are
created. They are standard-named po/ and intl/.
</P>
<P ALIGN="justify">
Being familiar with GNU gettext you should know that to make a program
be multi-lingual some code is to be added to its source.
Usually it's done the following way.
<P>
<B>// ...</B><BR><BR>
<B>#ifdef ENABLE_NLS</B></BR>
<B>#include <libintl.h></B><BR>
<B>#include <locale.h></B><BR>
<B>#define _(c) gettext(c)</B><BR>
<B>#endif</B><BR><BR>
<B>// ...</B><BR><BR>
int main() {<BR>
<B>// ...</B><BR>
<B>#ifdef ENABLE_NLS</B><BR>
setlocale(LC_ALL, "");<BR>
bindtextdomain("progname", "/usr/share/locale");<BR><BR>
<B>// Actually the directory for translation files
should</B><BR>
<B>// be specified in a more flexible way, but I left
it</B><BR>
<B>// hard-coded just to keep things
simple.</B><BR><BR>
textdomain("progname);<BR>
<B>#endif</B><BR>
<B> // ...</B><BR>
}<BR>
</P>
Having done all of this you can easily add now .po's to the
"Miscellaneous files" folder. If you use automake they will be compiled
and installed automatically.
</P>
<H3>The magic functional Makefile</H3>
<P ALIGN="justify">
It was obvious previous versions of motor needed more and more
flexibility. Growing amount of external GNU tools to be called, more
complex scripts, you know. I though a little about how to group them. So
I came up with a simple solution, to add a template for Makefile that
does everything. Its name is Makefile.func and it's called to compile
and clean the binaries and object files, to import files into CVS, to
call a debuger, even to generate automake required Makefile.am files.
</P>
<P ALIGN="justify">
The output of Makefile.func is displayed every time the execution is
performed. Actually it's quite customizable. If you don't want to see
all of those annoying and chaotic messages, you can easily turn it off
with the appropriate options in the "Motor settings" dialog. Options for
compiler and CVS output are separated. So you can control both of them.
</P>
<H3>Java support</H3>
<P ALIGN="justify">
Since the 2.15.7 release motor supports Java. Actually it's not that
deep and great Java support JBuilder has. Motor cannot even debug Java
programs so far though it's planned. What it can about this nice
language now is just to support its syntax and generate appropriable
Makefiles with automake. Also motor calls java VM to run a program from
the IDE.
</P>
<P ALIGN="justify">
First, you should have JDK. Also you will need path to your javac and
java binaries present on your PATH environment variable. To create a
Java program just follow the standard project creation procedure, don't
forget to select the "terminal program/java" template for it. In the
main class of your project (that what's the "Result file name" from the
"Project settings" dialog points to) you should have the standard
<B>public static void main()</B> method which is ran when you press F12.
That's it.
</P>
<H3>Other nifty facilities</H3>
<P ALIGN="justify">
I was often bothered by the fact that gdb stepped inside the standard
template library (STL) source when passing parameters of string type,
lists, vectors and other stuff. That's why I decided to implement an
option not to step inside the standard headers when debugging. You can
control such a behaviour with the "Debug standard headers" option in the
"Motor settings" dialog.
</P>
<P ALIGN="justify">
It happens from time you time you add some non-standard targets to the
Makefile. I found motor not to be able to execute such ones. So now
there is a "Make a target" item in the "Project" sub-menu. You can add
any targets there that are executed from motor which shows their output.
</P>
<H3>Plans for the future releases</H3>
<P ALIGN="justify">
I'm frequently asked questions like this: "What are you planning to
implement in the next release of motor?". Well, I will try to tell about
the planned features here in brief.
</P>
<H4>CVS front-end improvement</H3>
<P ALIGN="justify">
While using my own made front-end for CVS with motor, I found something
I can also need. Aside from checking in and out, viewing the file
modification history and module releases, it would be really great to
have a branching facility and ability to view diffs CVS can generate.
That's what I plan to implement first of all.
</P>
<H4>Regexper tool</H3>
<P ALIGN="justify">
This small feature can be of interest for those who like regular
expressions and use it in their everyday programming. This gonna be a
dialog that allows to construct regexps, try matching to various strings
specified and if everything is ok, give an ability for programmer to
insert it into the source.
</P>
<H4>Sending signals to a program being run</H3>
<P ALIGN="justify">
Every time a program I write is being ran, looking at the motor screen I
think why a developer cannot do anything there? So I think it's a good
idea to add some functionality such as sending signals, and maybe doing
something else instead of just reporting the program running.
</P>
<H2>About the Author</H2>
<P align="justify">
<IMG SRC="images/konstsm.jpg" ALIGN=LEFT>
Konstantin "konst" Klyagin, lives in Kharkov, Ukraine. He is a 4th year
student of the Kharkov State Polytechnical University, going
to get his
BS in System Analysis this year. Works as a programmer for the <A HREF="http://www.creativedd.com/">"Creative Data Desicions" company</A>. Has
got about 10 years overall programming
expirience. Personal interests
relate to computers, networking,
programming, IT, Linux, digital
innovations and also art, painting,
history, politics, heavy music,
girls, and having fun. Can be contacted at
<A HREF="mailto:konst@konst.org.ua?subject=motor">konst@konst.org.ua</A>.
Konst's personal site URL is
<A HREF="http://konst.org.ua/">http://konst.org.ua/</A>.
</P>
</TD><TD></TD></TR>
</TABLE>
</BODY></HTML>
|
