Sublime Forum

Transforming Sublime Text-3 into IDE

#1

I know, it’s a text editor and I could always use IDE instead. But I really love using Sublime Text-3. But unlike text editor like VIM and Emacs which could easily be converted into a full fledged IDE, using extensions and packages, I really find it hard to do so in Sublime Text-3 .So I would love to hear people’s opinion and suggestion on Transforming Sublime Text-3 into IDE.
If any one has already done so, can you please explain how you did so, in layman language.

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#2

From my point of view it is easier and not harder to setup Sublime Text to be more like an IDE, although emacs may have more packages to support more languages.

Sublime Text contains several useful features by default:

  • build with ctrl+b
  • hover popup to jump to symbol definitions
  • navigate symbol list with ctrl+r

With a single package SublimeCodeIntel you can add auto completion and “jump to variable definition” for a lot of languages.

I think that’s a good base to start with on any language and more than Emacs or VIM were offering by default.

In addition the Package Control offers packages for many languages, which sometimes add a special feature, but often most of the IDE features.

E.g. for python the Anaconda packages has auto completion, linter, tooltips, and much more. However you should remove Python from the enabled languages in the SublimeCodeIntel settings.

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#3

For C++ on Linux, I use packages ApplySyntax, EasyClangComplete and SublimeGDB. With these I feel I have enough of an IDE while not having na IDE using up a lot of RAM for nothing.

ApplySyntax is only to help Sublime know when a .h file is a C++ file:

"syntaxes": [ {
    "syntax": "C++/C++",
    "match": "all",
    "rules": [
        {"file_path": ".*\\.h$"},
        {"contains": "^\\s*(class)\\s"}
    ]
} ]

SublimeGDB is like a big step up from GDB’s text-UI, but still some way from a full IDE. For example, you miss out on advanced breakpoints and watches management. The code intelligence from EasyClangComplete (really from Clang in the end) is very useful, but not always exceptional.

Then there are so many other plugins that just fine-tunes your day-to-day editing. I do use Visual Studio for C++ from time to time on Windows and the general debugging experience in VS, for me, is pretty good while editing is not always pleasant. (VS had better be good at IDE stuff, it costs a lot).

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#4

I wrote this tutorial/whatever about this: Versioned Sublime Text Settings

Every day I spend I may came closer to get the Sublime Text as an IDE. Moreover there are several features requests to do, bugs to fix, package to develop, find and to put working. But someday we may get there. For now I am trying to sticky with it to work with several languages, developments, and see how the beat goes on.

  1. https://github.com/SublimeTextIssues/Core/issues
  2. https://github.com/sublimehq/Packages/issues
  3. https://github.com/wbond/package_control/issues
  4. https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/3/index.html
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#5

Hey there. I am the developer behind EasyClangComplete. Please be sure to report things that don’t work as expected as issues. I can’t guarantee that they will be solved in a day, but I do try to fix bugs quickly. And thanks for using the plugin. :slight_smile:

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#6

I love ST so much I never want to leave it :slightly_smiling:

Building is fairly straight forward, but interactive languages like python are tricky because getting input is problematic. SublimeREPL hasn’t been updated for a while. I can’t get it to play nice with ipython. I haven’t figured out how to debug python inside ST.

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#7

Would a #1468 Full/complete terminal features on Sublime Text help it? You may vote this feature up on:

  1. https://github.com/SublimeTextIssues/Core/issues/1468

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#8

I use Sublime as an IDE by having the editor open alongside a true console (e.g., an IPython console NOT the Sublime REPL). Then with the help of AutoHotKey (Windows) or Autokey (Linux), I have a shortcut step up to copy the selected text from Sublime or filename of the file to run and then paste it into the console.

See detailed instructions for Linux or Windows. The examples are for Python but should be easily adaptable.

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