[Pythonmac-SIG] xcode as IDE?

[Bob Ippolito]

On Feb 11, 2006, at 7:39 PM, I. Vinogradov wrote:

> while on the topic of IDEs, would it be possible to somehow adapt  
> Xcode
> to the task? It has Python keyword highlight, and PyObjC is one of the
> possible types of documents.
>
> I have some vague notion that perhaps a pure python file template can
> be made, that uses framework installation and all. Is something like
> that even possible?

Xcode isn't a very good IDE for anything but the languages it  
supports natively.  It does not have public APIs to change that,  
either.  If you use Xcode as an IDE, it won't be much more than a  
glorified text editor with syntax highlighting.  I wish it was a good  
idea to use Xcode, but they haven't built it in such a way that  
allows third parties to add value.

It makes a little sense with PyObjC because we've put together some  
py2app integration with Xcode, but it's a really ugly hack and  
doesn't work all that reliably because the custom build+run target is  
for some crazy reason stored as a user setting rather than a project  
setting.  It's also prone to break at any Xcode update because it  
needs to read the undocumented Xcode project file format in order to  
get the information it needs.

If you're considering Xcode, you'd be better off with Eclipse for  
Python development.  Eclipse is bigger, slower, and uglier -- but at  
least it can provide more functionality than a text editor.

-bob