Version 32 of Komodo

Updated 2007-12-04 00:56:16 by JH

ActiveState's Komodo IDE is built on the Mozilla platform. It supports dynamic languages, including Tcl, Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby; framework stacks like Ruby on Rails and CakePHP; and client libraries such as the Yahoo! UI Library and Dojo. See http://www.activestate.com/Products/Komodo_IDE for more information.

ActiveState added browser-side support in Komodo IDE 4.0, including debugging, DOM viewer, catalog support, HTTP Inspector, and code intelligence for languages such as JavaScript, CSS, HTML, and XML, enabling programmers to edit and debug Ajax code and multi-language files.

Komodo IDE, although not Open Source, is extensible using standard Mozilla APIs based on XUL, XBL, and XPCOM, plus Python and JavaScript. Komodo users can learn how to create extensions and share them with other users on the ActiveState community website: http://support.activestate.com

Komodo IDE is available for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows platforms.

ActiveState introduced a free Komodo-based editor in January 2007 called Komodo Edit. See http://www.activestate.com/products/komodo_edit/ for more details.

[what goes here?] download for registered users only/FREE evaluation copy.

escargo 2 Mar 2007 - Is this now the same as the evaluation copy of Komodo IDE? I saw nothing about Komodo Edit.

snichols 24 July 2007 - I've installed Komodo Edit on both my laptop and Linux workstation. The syntax highlighting is great. It automatically detects and adds syntax highlighting for all scripting languages I've used: xml, bash, ruby, python, tcl. My only complaint would be the startup is noticeably slow for an editor. Then again, eclipse and other full blown IDE's have slow startups up too. Because of this, I try to keep Komodo Edit open on the desktop.

Information about other development environments can be found at IDE.


Among the many interesting particular features of Komodo was the "ActiveState GUI Builder", a "simple tool for creating Tk-based GUIs for Perl, Python, and Tcl". That code has now been removed from Komodo, and placed onto SourceForge as spectcl.

See also GUI Building Tools.

Features specifically related to Tcl are

  • Integration of the prodebug backend. This makes Komodo a Dynamic Debugger for Tcl.
  • Integration of procheck. This allows Komodo to perform Static Syntax Analysis of Tcl code while you are editing (similar to the grammar/spell checker in modern word processing applications).
  • Command and call tips (syntax-aware popdowns that assist as you write your code).

You can see recorded webcast demos of Komodo at http://www.activestate.com/Corporate/Events/Webcasts/ .


Apparently, it could also be AOL's new Web browser: [L1 ]


[WK] Komodo's main advantage in debugging is that it keeps breakpoints correct when editing a file. In contrast with TclPro (and probably Tcl Dev Kit), this means that you don't have to move the breakpoints after you edit the files.

[We could use more reviews [L2 ] [L3 ] and comparisons of Komodo and TDK.]


Some of the Tcl functionality has been removed from OpenKomodo because those bits are not yet open source.


[ Category Application

Category Debugging

IDE ]