Any way to get Sublime2 into a lightweight IDE?

[Fannon]

Hello there

I really love SublimeText 2, the clean concept, the ways to customize it etc.
And for HTML / CSS / Text it’s already my favorite Editor.

But if i want to go in some more serious programming Stuff I miss to much productivity stuff from other IDE’s like Eclipse, Netbeans, Aptana… I hate to go back to those bulky, mostly ugly and oversized programs, but they save me a lot of time and frustration in some ways:

• IDE’s got a great autocompletion: And they even show your options *while *you’re typing (200ms delay…). So you don’t have to memorize all functions or hit CRTL + SPACE all the time. Thats a really great Feature I still haven’t got SublimeText to get any like this. (2nd Screenshot)
• IDE’s give you context-relatet help/info from the Documentation or the Comments itself (JavaDoc, PHPDoc, etc.) That makes programming SO much easier since you don’t have to switch to your docs/browser all the time.

I think this are my two main-points that I miss so much in Sublime2 right now.

Is there a possibility that SublimeText could get Features like this in Future too?

Greets,
Simon

[atomi]

I still use Eclipse for larger Java projects.
The problem with getting that kind of code insight in Sublime is that it requires Type Introspection.
And I’m not sure how easily that could be accomplished using the current API of Sublime.

I agree it would be super awesome to have in Sublime, and if someone can point to a good starter I might be interested in helping out with this for Groovy objects or Java I guess.

[ehamiter]

github.com/Kronuz/SublimeCodeIntel

[C0D312]

All that functionality is available through some plugins such as SublimeCodeIntel. The easiest way to find, install, and keep these plugins up to date is with Package Manager (wbond.net/sublime_packages/package_control).

[enniot]

But CodeIntel doesn’t have context related help… While I appreciate It, a more robust feature complete solution would be great indeed.

[jbrooksuk]

The API is missing the kind of functionality needed for this kind of thing.

We need some kind of tooltip to show documentation in, we need to control the list of suggestions etc.

[Fannon]

All that functionality is available through some plugins such as SublimeCodeIntel. The easiest way to find, install, and keep these plugins up to date is with Package Manager (wbond.net/sublime_packages/package_control).

Yes, I already tryed out this one and it is definately heading in the right direction!
But this Extension gives me serious Problems, for example it makes very weird autocomplete behaviours in HTML.
And sometimes it’s working sometimes not. I’m sitting on a Windows machine here

So this is exactly my point:

But CodeIntel doesn’t have context related help… While I appreciate It, a more robust feature complete solution would be great indeed.

And it would be SO great if Sublime2 would have something (maybe even just basic and extendable) like this “in core”.

Greets,
Simon

[qwerty1]

If you want IDE features, use an IDE. Using Java as an example, if you are a Java developer, you should be using Eclipse, or similar. Yes Eclipse is heavyweight, but it is so for a reason. Eclipse has millions of lines of code, with hundreds of developers, working for many years. To think that Sublime could even approach this level of sophistication is completely unrealistic, even if we wanted it to be so. But we don’t. We want Sublime to be a lightening fast text editor; that is all.

If you think that Eclipse, etc. are simply glorified text editors, then you probably aren’t utilising your IDE to its full potential. Likewise if you think that with a few plugins, Sublime would make programming in Java so much better.

The example of showing Javadocs is a perfect. There is a lot of code and configuration that goes into that view. First it has to know what the classpath is for the given project, then it has to know how to resolve this classpath, then it has to parse the Java source, then it has parse the javadocs, then it has to render it in some html hybrid kind of view, then it has to provide a browser like UI to allow navigation. Then it has to do this continuously in the background to keep it in synch with recently edited code, or recently modified classpath. In short, Sublime can not do it, and its unfair to ask.

There is of course always scope for plugins to add useful features here and there, and for many scripting languages that don’t really require fully fledged IDEs, e.g. Python, this might be enough. (Although since I started using an IDE for Python, I wouldn’t go back to using just a text editor for that either).

[enniot]

If you want IDE features, use an IDE.

He had put IDE under ‘’ … 'IDE". .
I guess we all don’t want… or better… we wouldn’t like SublimeText to be an IDE. SublimeText will be what his creator will want it to be. ( Sorry for my Eng.)
Imho this editor is near to be perfect. Is fast, lightweight, beautiful and powerfull.

Maybe here we are just asking a context documentation that seems to be more related to SublimeCodeIntel… in this case. While is might sound good to have those features built-in, I would like Sublime to be more a modular app.

ok we got code completition from library… if we can get context docs, the better… if we could have a debugger too ( I’m thinking of Komodo Edit/IDE, just for 2 features)… even better.
If we can’t… SublimeText is still my editor of choice and I’m happy I paid for it.

@qwerty1
when you say: “We want Sublime to be a lightening fast text editor;” - I agree… but that is NOT all.

PS: I must say I love those pictures Fannon included in his post.