I've looked at the xored eclipse-based F4 IDE and tcollar's cambertide.

Tcollar's IDE did not play nicely with me even opening files on double-click from project file pane, creating new files, etc. And it has no syntax/indentation help which would be fine for many but newcomers to Fantom will learn quicker with it. Maybe my mistakes...

F4 is really nice - beautiful syntax coloring and error messages etc. It is a bit weird in that without some extra stuff it will build and run regardless of whether the build step succeeded. I guess some clever stuff in the build Fantom file could mend this, or a makefile.

My worry with F4 is it does not seem to be supported any more?

I'd like to find/make a very competent IDE easy for newcomers to use. Syntax is different enough from Java/C that for most people there will be a learning period where syntax errors in the editor would be very helpful. In fact even with languages I know I find this support good in detecting typos etc.

I really like Fantom - but can't see it gaining a decent ecosystem without a beautifully wrapped easy to use IDE to go with the beautifully wrapped command line tools.

Does anyone else have ideas?

Coming from Eclipse (because I did some RCP development) I admit I just use the awesome F4. I really do tip my hat towards Xored.

F4 does not seem to be supported any more?

I can't comment, but I find there are only a couple niggles with it. For me, it just works.

It does ships with Fantom-1.0.63 though, so to use the APIs of newer Fantom versions you need to add your Fantom dist as an interpreter.

Oh, and you'll struggle in the debugger until you set debug=true in %FAN_HOME%/etc/sys/config.props!

it will build and run regardless of whether the build step succeeded.

I think you'll find the code you are running is from the last time the build succeeded. I say more in F4: Why Do My Tests Still Pass?. In short, don't run code until it all compiles!

I've been thinking for while that a beginners guide to F4 might be handy...

: /

I agree.

A beginners guide + a way to modify the build code so that it deletes the last built version before compiling.

It is, otherwise, really nice. And lots of people know eclipse - it used to be slow but modern CPUs have mended that :)

so far my "semi-beginners" guide to Fantom: http://wikisend.com/download/490316/tutorial.pdf runs to 27 pages and covers:

• intro: why fantom? (not quite the same as Andy & Brian's)
• type system differences from other languages
• functions in Fantom
• concurrency, actors. (need to ad immutability)
• it blocks etc
• conclusions: where does it sit wrt other languages

It is still work in progress...

I want to add a Chapter on IDEs and maybe just a "how to get started with F4" would be enough. The web site tools section is a bit out of date and does not have a shrink-wrapped "it just works" solution.

But it really is annoying that build & run will run the previous build on errors. So I'd like to change that.

Tom

Hi Tom, I just wanted to acknowledge the on-going effort you're putting into that guide! It reads really well, esp the stuff on the type system. And I'm amazed at how much it has come along in such a short amount of time!

:D

How do I open the guide? I downloaded a RAR file called tracks, and inside is a bunch of CDA files.

Hi Insanity!

It seems that link is now being used for something else (CD tracks by the sound of it!). Tom has now put his tutorial up on GitHub:

https://github.com/tomcl/fantom-tutorial

Try that!

@SlimerDude I thought they were some kind of audio file but I wasn't quite sure. Anyways, thanks for the link to the Git repo!