Purpose: discuss the various Tk/Tcl Integrated Development Environments (i.e. IDE) available at this time.
Sometimes people offer as components/candidates programs such as:
[Consolidate with material referenced as "GUI Building Tools".]
I quite like ASED, as an IDE for smaller projects, where Source Navigator is a bit over the top. NEM.
Some people mention TclPro, but TclPro is NOT an IDE. At least not by the criteria listed as what features would be useful in a Tcl IDE. It does not have an integrated editor.
In fact, TclPro is a set of non-integrated tools. The TclPro debugger is a GUI-based, debug-only environment...
However, Komodo, historically considered a descendant of TclPro (though I suspect little or no code in common) is a proper IDE.
Some have referred to VisualGipsy as an IDE - but its description seems less an IDE and more a layout application. I don't know if it is still available.
If you have used IDEs for other languages, you likely come to Tcl/Tk development with a set of expectations. Use coming to Tcl/Tk from an IDE environment to discuss the difficulties and needs you have.
Emacs is quite useful editor. Those who don't like it may find ViM very practical (well, at least in *nix world).
See also GUI Building Tools - IDE: from cathedral to patchwork bazaar
escargo 28 Mar 2006 - I was interested to see that several of the Python IDE projects are getting together to try to combine and consolidate their work, and remove duplication: http://pyxides.stani.be/
Whether such a thing is practical or desirable for Tcl and Tk as well would be its own discussion.
It seems like those people who venture off and create their own editors or IDEs are doing because of perceived gap in the functions of the IDEs that are already available. (Although some might be doing it purely as a learning experience.) Any new tool needs to offer enough advantages that the effort of learning a new tool and discarding old tools is worth the investment. There's got to be a substantial reason to switch. I've been thinking that something that an IDE or a Notebook App or Personal Wikis combined a feature like FIT might be worth doing. tb 12 Jun 2007 - People come to Tcl/Tk from different places with different preferences of workflow and code management. If they come here, look around and get a list of IDEs along with a short description, they can easily decide which one to go with. In contrast, to create a "OneAndOnlyIDE" for Tcl/Tk would always have to formalize things like code/documentation management, exchange and deployment. Although this has advantages, it would give Tcl/Tk only one face of many.
escargo - I recognize that one size does not fit all, but on the other hand, reinventing the wheel is often a waste of effort. To me it makes some sense to have a framework where different functions can be added on in a modular fashion so the whole assembly becomes more useful than in a bunch of separate, disparate tools that never get enough effort to be truly useful.
A do-it-yourself IDE with the text widget
Category Acronym | Category Dev. Tools | Category Discussion