Re: Re: Integrated compiler/project support

Tor Norbye wrote:

> On Apr 7, 2004, at 10:46 AM, Jesse Glick wrote:
>
>> Gili wrote:
>>
>>> 1) Integrating the compiler with the IDE like Eclipse does such that
>>> hitting SAVE is equivilent to SAVE & COMPILE (and CLEAN if necessary)
>>> and its so fast that users don't notice. This should be the default
>>> behavior (internal compiler) and if issues arise people could always
>>> back out to the external compiler.
>>
>>
>> Probably the main usefulness of doing this is not to compile the file 
>> per se, but to show you any compilation errors... which we already do 
>> (as annotations in the editor), but this needs to be made more 
>> reliable, and probably should be displayed in the tasklist. I think 
>> such improvements are in the works.
>
>
> The editor annotation scanning does not do a complete error check - it 
> skips at least one phase of the compiler, which means it doesn't tell 
> you about missing returns, uncaught exceptions, etc. I believe this 
> was done for performance reasons.  And that may be a valid thing to do 
> for a scan that's done interactively while editing, but I agree with 
> Gili that on save, it's acceptable for a slightly more costly 
> operation to be performed.
>
> And yes, it's very important to list the compiler errors in a separate 
> window, since the editor annotations alone force me to use the mouse 
> to hover over the underline or gutter icon.

Compiling can be very costly if it's not incremental and it won't always 
be incremental.  What if the errors aren't in the file being saved, but 
in some other file.  Isn't it at least a bit odd if not downright 
misleading to be saving Foo.java and the output window puts up a new 
panel detailing errors in Bar.java?  Then again, maybe this is one of 
those improvements one just has to get used to.  If it was implemented, 
I would want a switch to turn it off in case I hate it.

I agree with somehow getting the error annotations more visible. 
 Sometimes the hover deal doesn't work.  I also find that often the line 
is out of date (so hovering does nothing, but the line stays).  The 
background updates can take anywhere from a few seconds to several 
minutes to occasionally not at all.  Most of the time, adding a 
whitespace character to the line and then removing it will force an 
update, but not always, and not always fast.  (This is on a pretty fast 
machine w/ 1GB Ram)