Is there any way to make it so that the “live logging” window can be scaled “portrait” - it cuts off real short when it is long
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May I suggest that the Cloud9 web-based IDE is worth taking a close look at for further ideas?
It has “runners” (execution / debug environments) for a few languages (e.g., Node.js) and apparently there is a way to plug-in more (Groovy can be selected for an editing environment).
It is a nice multi-pane IDE … I’m just starting to use it, so I can’t say for sure whether it beats my old standard of VisualStudio (or Eclipse, etc.). One major feature that is a benefit on large projects is concurrent - collaborative editing ability!
…Terry.
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Can we also force people to use semi-colons at the end of every statement of Groovy code?;
OK … I’m sure this is a religious argument. I’m just new to Groovy and I have a huge pet peeve about languages that don’t have mandatory statement terminators. It’s just asking for trouble, IMHO.
Hmph; Thanks++;
I second all the suggestions and would like to add one small thing “SPEED”. The slowness of the IDE when coding, saving, setting location and trying to simulate kills you most of the times.
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Even better would be github integration combined with an ST plugin for the atom editor.
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I cannot get into Atom over Sublime Text 3. Sell me 
@Ben Honestly, I still prefer sublime text for my larger projects. But atom is getting better all the time. For small projects I have been using atom. It is free and hackable and it’s development and user base will soon eclipse sublime.
If I didn’t already use Sublime, I would probably be super excited about Atom. But since I do use Sublime (and have it lovingly configured to do exactly what I want), I don’t see an advantage to Atom.
The only real difference for me is the responsiveness. I have atom set up to behave just like my sublime config. The fact that sublime is a compiled application makes it much more efficient. Given that all I do all day is write code and I paid for sublime, I keep using it. Once atom performs better, I will switch completely.
Are there plans to and Intellisense to the IDE? I think adding this, while most-likely a considerable investment for SmartThings, would have a large payoff to the community. I can tell you from my experience that I do not have every class and library memorized. I’m just struggling to learn the basics of Groovy!
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Autocompleting and in-line code references are some of the most requested features. We are looking into these.
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A debugger with variable evaluation.
Code complete.
Search - through current code, all your own code, and all code.
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Be careful what you ask for, Intella-sense can easily turn into an intella-menace…
Found this thread a bit late, but here is my 2 cents worth of inputs :
- reliable logging : sometimes, for unpredictable reasons, log stops working; at the same time, while the log pane appears empty, the SmartApp or Device Handler continue to work… or not
- strictly identical behavior between IDE and iOS/Android mobile App (ex: ticket #63621)
- IDE safe for saving modifications : sometimes (usually after some lengthy inactive IDE period), just when you want to save your latest modifications, the IDE brings you to the logging page, and once logged again, you discover you have lost all your latest modifications
- IDE lack of quirky behavior : to make it work reliably after a modification, I have to Save / Publish for me / goto SmartApps / select again my SmartApp / enter Location and Preferences /. Otherwise, when I just Edit and Install, nothing happens (or the log does not show)
- IDE error messages when some incompatibility exists between the IDE and the browser : for example, 10 days ago, I thought all my saved SmartApps had disappeared from the cloud/IDE : when selected, their window was totally empty (ticket #75037). Then I discovered it was a new and unexpected regression, with TenFourFox browser now incompatible with IDE, while it was perfectly OK before (Safari was still working)
- color schemes which make sense and are not kaleidoscopic : the latest modifications of colors are definitely not a plus !
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Just repeating myself here because I just shared my first “substantial” SmartApp and I used Cloud9 to do my editing. (The editor supports a long list of coding languages, including Groovy.)
Cloud9 provides a “workspace” (a virtual Linux session) with various tools including git (and it fully supports remote repos on GitHub; so I was able to do my git-ing very easily while on Cloud9.
Cloud9 will even SSH out to your own execution environments (ssh + Node.js required?), so integration with SmartThing’s simulator is not out of the realm of possibilities.
More general, their rich editor is Open-Source, “ACE”, (a successor of Mozilla Skywriter). At first glance, it seems quite “atom” like … I’m sure there are some detailed reviews and comparisons out there.
http://ace.c9.io/#nav=about
http://ace.c9.io/build/kitchen-sink.html
Atom or ACE … any Open-Source “full feature” code editor would be a great candidate for SmartThings IDE; and, a GitHub (or a SmartThings hosted git repo?) seems an obvious choice for code management and release management. Owners and contributors can be assigned to the repos for each SmartApp, and pushing for publication just requires merging into the “release” branch for the project. … Nice, no?
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On August 22 @ben wrote:
How’s prioritization going? Is Github integration on the horizon? 2015? 2020? 
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Github will happen in 2015! Seriously, soon.
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Didn’t review entire thread for forgive me if this is already mentioned:
I would like the ability to search example and shared device-types and smart-apps for particular methods, capabilites, attributes, etc… As a newb, I am often interested in seeing examples of how certain things are implemented in code. Being able to target where to look for examples would be helpful, I think.
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Perhaps equally valuable, yet better indexed, would be to have “smart” documentation pages that automatically reference live code examples. In other words – since the first place we ought to look is the official documentation reference, the next jump should be from there.
I am unaware of any documentation system or IDE or language website that actually does that though.
The only comparable I can think of is Stackoverflow; in which the responses to coding questions are frequently given as code snippets.
e.g., http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12580262/groovy-closure-with-optional-arguments
