Free IDE Gambas Reaches 1.0

A few months ago, the GPL IDE Gambas reached 1.0 release candidate phase, and now reader drfreak writes "Gambas has now hit 1.0 and looks promising as GNU/Linux's answer to Visual Basic. Now, if it ran in Windows too, it would truly crush VB for database applications. Check it out at gambas.sourceforge.net." A 1.0.1 release came out on January 3rd to fix a few bugs.

project's aims (from site)

[mincognito]

This project aims at making a graphical development environment based on a Basic interpreter, so that we have a language like Visual Basic(TM) under Linux(TM). The phenomenal quantity of bugs and inconsistencies that makes Visual Basic so delightful persuaded me to start this project ;-) It seems that Microsoft is aware of the poor quality of its language, as VB .Net is not backward compatible with older versions of Visual Basic. I think they have thrown away the Visual Basic interpreter source code, and that VB .Net is just a .Net runtime compiler whose syntax looks like the Visual Basic one. Well, it's just my own opinion... ;-) I want to clear up any misunderstanding immediately. Gambas does not try to be compatible with Visual Basic, and will never be. I'm convinced that its syntax and internals are far better than the one's of its proprietary cousin ;-) I took from Visual Basic what I found useful : the Basic language, the development environment, and the easiness to quickly make programs with user interfaces. But I dislike the very bad level of common Visual Basic programmers, often due to bad pratices imposed by the bugs and strangeness of this language. So I will try to make Gambas as coherent, logical and reliable as possible, and I hope that Gambas programmers will make effort in return ! ;-) At the moment, I'm looking for programming help. The kernel of Gambas is now stabilized, if not well documented. There is a component example to help people learning how to write components. I hope other people will join me to help to increase the possibilities of the language. There is so much to do !

Wow

[md81544]

Purists may smirk at this, being VB-like and all, but I just compiled this from source and had a play... it's incredibly well done. I'm really impressed. I'd love to see something like this which builds proper executables and allows C or C++ for the language.

I haven't had a chance to investigate further (should be working, after all!) but does anybody know what you need to distribute to get an app working on another box? Does the RPM it creates install all the required libs etc or do they need Gambas installed too?

Re:Looks Good

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pretty simple.

Single parent MDI windows in Linux suck ass.

Why?

Because there is no reason for it. In windows it's nessicary because you have to dumpall your windows into the same space. With Linux you have multiple virtual desktops.

Say you have Gimp. You setup 2 virtual desktop windows, one for artwork and toolbar, the other to contain all of the dialogs. (like for brushes, layers, selections, patterns, etc etc)

That way you quickly switch back and forth (I use a simple keycombo).

This arrangement is much more superior then what is possible if Gimp used a single window-parent style like Photoshop does, and it is the reason people design applications like they do.

In Windows you need this because all the windows occupy one space. If you have more then one app open all the different windows get mixed up together and it's a huge pain in the ass to keep them all sorted.

People who heavily multitask have to do things like move the task bar to the side of the screen and make it so that they can read the names of the windows. Total usability crappiness.

Photoshop does what it does because it was originally a Mac OS application and the MDI window emulates the actions of the Mac OS desktop.

in Mac OS each application has it's own virtual desktop. When you click on a Window it brings the ENTIRE application to the front, instead of just the particular window you clicked on.

That's one of the major reasons why Gimp has such a bad rap. Because it's designed to be used in a enviroment that has superior window handling capabilities instead of the still-stuck-in-the-early-1990's style that Windows uses.

Beleive me. Single window-parent MDI interfaces SUCK. Especially when you have multiple monitors. They just introduce severe limitations on the user.

much better to have a bunch of secondary windows on one or two desktops on either side of your main workspace and you switch to them when you need them, then keep the main area were you work constantly in the front and pretty much full screen.

That way you don't have to dick around with searching thru a bunch of menus and crap to find what you want. Go left of current screen you have everything you are looking for right in front of you and were you left it.

Go left, go right, go up, go down. Each direction can have not only the windows associated with the MDI app your working with, but other related applications or things you need to keep a eye on, such as irc-clients or Mozilla open on slashot.

Also reduces the need for massive expensive monitors, too.

Once you get used to it it is very intuitive.

Of course if your coming from a Windows background with only a single workspace to operate in I can see how it's a bit confusing at first.

Re:if you want VB on Linux why not just use REALBa

[anagama]

• Consider that already REALBasic 5.5 is loads ahead of this project in that much of the syntax is VB like, yet you can release one app simulataneously on Mac OS 9, OS X, Windows and Linux. ... sure it's not free software but it works DAMN well.

You're right it ain't free - It's $600 for the version that will work for all three OSes, or a grand if you want a 12 month subscription. Kind of steep for those of us who just fool around with computers for fun rather than work.

Re:REALbasic

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're looking for a free, cross-platform Basic, have a look at wxBasic [sourceforge.net]. It's based on wxWidgets [wxwidgets.org], an excellent cross-platform C++ library (yes, the widgets are native on Mac, Windows and Linux).

It's still beta, the IDE is only now being developed, and the Mac port doesn't exist yet (any volunteers?), but it fits the "free" criteria...

Re:Best logo

[Zone-MR]

Yeah, but <blink> elements aren't supported on IE :)

Re:A better alternative

[marcovje]

Or try Lazarus:

http://lazarus.freepascal.org

Why not Mono basic?

[StrawberryFrog]

"Mono basic [go-mono.com] (mbas) is a CIL compiler for the VisualBasic.NET language, an extended version of Visual Basic. It's based on the MCS compiler and still in heavy development, though many language features are already supported."

Mono basic will be based on VB.NET, not awful old VB.
Mono basic will actually be rather compatible with MS VB.NET in language and class library.
Mono basic will be able to take advantage of code written in or for Mono/C#, and any other languages that get ported to the mono platform.

So what does this project have going for it over mono basic?
OK, so right now it's a bit further down the road than mono basic, but will it really maintain that lead? I think Mono has more weight behind it. e.g. novell.

Re:So now it's ok to like VB?

[Val314]

>Coders write quick'n'dirty VB apps with the intention of redoing them in (for example) C++ later.

Back in the VB5/6 days i never heard anyone who did VB stuff that this is only meant as prototype. it was allways meant to be released as VB App. (with some DLLs written in VC++)

Re:Cluttered IDE

[raindog2]

Some of us who use and develop Gambas agree with you. I began work on an MDI IDE [kudla.org] for Gambas a year and a half ago, and released actual working code, but the language was such a moving target at that time (version 0.57) that I had to abandon it. I hope to produce one for Gambas 1.0 in the near future, and Benoit plans to add MDI functionality to the IDE in the development series for 2.0.

Re:So now it's ok to like VB?

[smallpaul]

VB has really terrible exception handling which DOES make it hard to write reliable code. It also has pathetic data structures which makes it difficult to write efficient code.

Re:Tcl Tk

[hobbs]

As noted in a previous response, Tk actually has a themed widget extension call tile:

http://tktable.sourceforge.net/tile/ [sourceforge.net]

This works well enough for production apps now, but it will also become part of the Tk core in the near future. They interoperate with all existing Tk widgets, and the extension works with Perl's Tcl::Tk binding and with Tkinter.

Even without that, it is not more than a dozen lines of code to polish up the look of most Tk apps, it is just that many don't put that last spit and polish step into their code.

Re:VBRUN300.dll Not found?

[kosmosik]

I think you can do anything you whish :) you have full source code access so you probably can compile a one static lib with everything in it...

On related news...

[Spy der Mann]

Cross-platform (non-RAD... yet) C++ IDE "codeblocks" [codeblocks.org] (developed by a former Dev-C++ developer) version 1.0b4 was released yesterday.