Is there any chance of the official IDE changing?

As in, being written in something other than MaxGUI. I'm really getting tired of the IDE locking up, losing all my source ( sometimes ) or just the changed source ( if I'm lucky ) and it's still disconnecting my net connection when a compile-time error pops up.

I've upgraded to the latest version of the IDE, but it really doesn't make the slightest bit of difference. Is there any chance of getting the official IDE ported over to something else? I really don't want to be forced to use Blide. As close as it is to being a great IDE, it has quirks of it's own that I can't bear. All I want is a very simple, basic IDE that doens't lock up regularly, and disconnect me from the net when it finds a compile-time error.

I've never had any problems with the IDE crashing or disconnecting my broadband, so this is weird ...

maybe you should be looking at a new PC or a virus scanner, not a new IDE :)

seriously,
try the MAxIDE community edition. it is excellent and Ihave not had any problems with it crashing.

2nd. back up all of your BMAX files and do a clean install. remove/uninstall and then reinstall.

IDE is fine here, none of the above problems (Mac). But the community edition on the Mac did not work for me at all, said it was incomplete or damaged.

Yes, there's always one who would blame the user rather than the software.


I do that every time I install a new version and every single version of BlitzMax has done it. Killing my net connection is a new one, but the Blitz3D and BlitzPlus IDE's have crashed every PC I've ever owned on a regular basis too. Course you'll probably just blame that on me being too stupid to use my computer too.


I'll take a look.

Gabriel,

I did not intend to offend you in any way and I apologize if i did.

The MaxIDE Community Edition works great and has a bunch of additional cool stuff.

I hope it works for you.

Yepp, community edition is a great replacement for the standard ide. I don't use the standard anymore at all, just CE and Blide at the moment and perhaps hydra as comming main ide when it is ready as I always liked Scintilla (had PB and DBP editors basing on it)

You know the saying "can't polish a turd?" Yeah, my thoughts on any and all IDEs based on the original source code. I use ConTEXT because it's easy to use and outdoes the default IDE in all ways. Even has macros, so I'm very happy using it.

I don't think I've seen any reports of crashes like yours Gabriel in either the official or CE versions. As it affects you, the most likely culprit would appear to be something on your machine, most likely some other software interfering?

As for a replacement IDE from BRL, I think your safe forgetting it. The Mac IDE was written in something else, and was dropped once the Mac MaxGUI was complete.

What is needed is additional functionality in MaxGui, which will then enable a better IDE in MaxGui, although I can hardly blame all the IDE issues on lack of functions in MaxGui (just textarea related ones).

If you're interested, there's a link to the CE IDE in my sig below. Oh, and thanks Noel.

Already got it, thanks. I've low expectations though, since it appears to just be a tweaked version of the same IDE. More so if - as you say - no one's aware of the problems with it, let alone fixed it.


That seems spectacularly improbable since the same thing has affected the past four computers I've owned ( two, just with BlitzMax ) and since it happens with no other programs running, even more so since no other programs exhibit the any vaguely similar symptoms.

Of course, as I said, it is much easier to blame the user than the software, even when you have to brush remarkably improbable sets of circumstances off as coincidence.


Yes, you're right. I was dreaming really. I know it won't happen. Might as well just grin and bear Blide or something else. That's assuming that the bug knocking my connection offline is in the IDE and not the debugger, in which case I'm stuck with it no matter what.

It's not that improbable. If you have ne shared piece of hardware between all 4 PCs, there could be a screwy driver affecting something. For example something for a router? printer? Or is there some essential bit of software that you choose to run on startup on all of your 4 PCs, which could be interfering?

I realise it seems unlikely, but with absolutely no-one else reporting this, I would say it's more likely to be external software than the IDE. Of course, if anyone else can report this, and we can spot a theme, I'd be more than happy to investigate. AsI'm sure you realise, it is virtually impossible to fix a bug when you cannot reproduce it.

The CE IDE is a tweaked version of the existing IDE, but we are in the process of refactoring a lot of the code, with a view to making some signficant improvements. It was only suggested so that I could find out if your bug affects "my" code too, or if it's just the official IDE, in the vain hope of fixing it.

It would be really nice to be able to address your complaints Gabriel, but we do have a lot of BlitzMax users and no one has been able to confirm your disconnection problem.

As for the IDE being to blame for lockups, what kind of application are you working on when this happens? I would of course really like to improve things for you if I can.

Even Gabriel would abmit its understandable that saying "I've had this mistake on all the computers I've had, and I've had this problem.." would lead everyone to point out the common factor.

BUT. Gabriel probably does know what hes doing.
So, can anyone think of problems that might cause this. IE, A certain type of internet company, A Driver for anything, (Mice and stuff), A unique set of varaible names. Resizing a canvas in maxgui.
Just because its only effected Gabriel, doesnt mean it only effects Gabriel. It just means hes the only one who has noticed it. Lets assume it is some sort of error in MaxGui. Have you every caused this to happen with your applications? If so How.

Crashing IDE yes, many times, loosing data? Not noticable because on every build it saves my code, and I build alot, on top of that I save my code alot. I tried the CE that is posted, and wasn't able to find a use for it since it did practically nothing on my Windows XP Pro machine.

I have a little story about this issue of loosing information though...

"Jesus and the Devil were having a technology fight, God comes along and says, kids, lets just settle this fight now. So God puts Jesus and the Devil to work writing a program, one to help all man kind, he gives them both 1 hour to write it. The Devils fingers are smoking away as he pounds out the program as fast as he can, Jesus has light shining away from his fingers as he types up the program. 59 minutes pass and God comes along and shuts off the power, waits 1 minute and turns the power back on. The Devil is cursing like made while Jesus is just setting there polishing his nails. God asks Jesus and the Devil what kind of program they finished for all man kind, the Devil curses at God because God turned off the power before the Devil was finished writing his program, causing him to loose all of his work. Jesus look up at his father and says, I save and save often so all man kind can live through what I have created."

I guess there is a moral in the story I wrote.
I'll leave that moral up to you to decide.

Okay, so that's two people experiencing crashes: Gabriel and Zumwalt.

We think there is a mem leak in the IDE that we haven't yet tracked down, so if you're keeping the IDE running for along time (many hours), could that be it? I'd expect that to be a slow death rather than crash though.

Other than that, can you offer any clues as to whether there is a specific thing you are doing when it crashes? Is it always during a compile, or just when typing, or...?

Zumwalt, are you saying the CE IDE doesn't run on your PC at all, or just that you didn't find it worthwhile? If it is crashing, please get in touch on the CE thread in BMax Module Tweaks.

All build options, I have had it crash using any of the 3, (quick build, debug, gui), it doesn't always keep my projects on the projects tab, as in, I click Add Project, quit from the IDE, load it back and my Projects tab is empty, so I have re-add my projects, very anoying.

Home tab, under Source Code, it doesn't show ALL my mods, only the brl.mod folder, the pub.mod folder and the src, I have 4 others in the mod folder, and there is no way to add them.

Neither the 1.20 official IDE nor the CE have a 'projects' that is really a 'projects'. A Project is a collection of all files that are associated with that project, including a 'main' project file, meaning that I say that MyGame.BMX is the main entry point to the application and the project folder should be aware of all files that are associated with the project, like all the other BMX files that are linked through Imports and show them in a 'projects' collection, etc.

Synch Mod, where to begin on this:
Keeping this short, checking off the 4 new boxes for MAK, AXE, GMAN, and BIRDIE, only a few items from AXE download, nothing from any of the others, so there is no point in having them as a checkable item.

Short term and long term programming, I have actually had the CE IDE crash and close on me while mid programming only after being open for an hour, atleast with the official 1.20 build, its never done that, they both crash during any of the compile stages, they both crash during run (compile and run), I have had it where I compile and run, close my application and upon my app close, so does the IDE. Doesn't bother me, I have a shortcut on the desktop for the ide to open it back up.

CE and 1.20, well, on the surface they are the same, I haven't found the WOW of the CE yet that would make me just use it only.

I think that about sums it up for now. Not complaining mind you, just answering your question.

No shared hardware, no. That's why I say it's so improbable. We're talking different monitors, different keyboard, even the most unlikely candidates. And no, no links in software either. AV software has changed twice over that period, as has software firewall of choice and spyware removal tools of choice. I don't think I even have anything else installed and NOT running which is the same between all machines. In fact I'm sure of it, as this latest machine has no old software at all.


Of course, which is why I asked if there was any chance of just moving the IDE over to something else, because there's no realistic chance of fixing a bug I can't reproduce. I can't make it happen to order on MY machine, let alone anything else. I just type a character ( any character ) and it locks up, or I hit compile, the debugger pops up with a compile error and my modem starts redialling. If it were my code, I wouldn't want to try to find THAT.


Skid, I sympathize, I genuinely do. You'd have more luck trying to find a needle in a haystack than tracking down the vague problems I'm having. Hence why I'm not posting it as a bug report. But it is annoying, so I just thought I'd ask if there was any hope of the IDE being rewritten, perhaps using an existing component ( scintilla or whatever ) but Mark T's right, that's unrealistic too.


Sorry if I was vague there, I didn't want to rehash everything again. It doesn't lock up anything else, I just type a character and the IDE locks up. The last time it happened was when it was the first character I typed after minimizing the IDE, doing something else and coming back to it, but I can't say if that's always been the case, because it's just not something I would remember. I'll try to make a mental note to remember though.


I generally close the IDE several times a day to be on the safe side, and just in case I get a power outage ( we used to get them a lot! ) so this is probably not it.


Could gaining and losing focus and/or being minimized be any part of it? It's the only thing that springs to mind. The lockup is absolutely always when I press a key ( type something ) in the IDE. I'm 99% certain that the IDE has never locked up under any other circumstances, such as compiling, changing a menu option or whatever. And it's definitely never locked up during execution of a program.

I almost always code in debug, with GUI enabled, so that's the only settings I can comment on.

Well, at least that's a decent list of issues to go at!

On the projects side, a total revamp of how projects work is in order, but to be honest, that's probably quite a way down our list of things to do.

And as for the WOW factor, I think I'd agree that there probably isn't any single thing to make you use CE IDE: it's largely incremental improvement on the official IDE, and whether those incremental improvements are of value to you will always be a personal thing.

Do you also get the disconnect problem that Gab is getting?

(I'm on holiday for 10 days from Friday, so if I stop showing an interest soon, that's why!)

You can compile the IDE source in debug mode yourself and see what happened to your connection.

Or you can use other debugger to track it down, however the fastest way to get fixed it trying to make it reproducable on other's PCs.

(my post above was written before Gabriel's appeared)

You know, that's not a bad suggestion yoxola. If you've got maxgui, would you (Gabriel & Zumwalt) be able to run the code in debug mode?

OK, new version of IDE is up which I recomend everybody to upgrade.

The false activation of the main editor window in win32 I still don't quite understand but it shouldn't happen anymore. The debugger has a big fix which I don't think would affect stability but does make it a lot more usable. And if you have an Intel Mac, syntax highlighting is now way fast...

skid, could you post the source for this latest version (or email it to me AND Byteemoz as I'm on holiday for a week) so that I can ensure the same fixes can be applied to the CE IDE please?

I don't get IDE lockups on the CE version, and as far as internet connection is concerned, I have never yet experienced it, not to the point that I would have noticed anyway since I rarely if ever use anything on the internet while I am programming my game. If I do, I have a nice little SuSE linux box on a SlimLine PC sitting next to me, so I can hop on firefox there and find what ever I need / want.