[Idle-dev] IDLE GSoC Extension

[Chas Leichner]

I posted on this list at the start of the summer about my Google
Summer of Code project. I've made a lot of progress and want to bring
it to the community for some feedback. For people who missed a
description, I am working on an extension to IDLE which will allow
tutorials to be more interactive. It works by accepting specially
annotated Python files which describe their own annotations. It then
generates a trace of the execution, along with annotations and
variables, storing it as a JSON file. I then made another type of
window for stepping through the traces like a debugger and displaying
the annotations at the appropriate lines.  I have gotten to the point
where I have a working prototype for my project and would like to know
where the IDLE developers see it fitting in with IDLE.  I don't know
if it would fit in better as a built in additional feature, an
optional extension, or somewhere in between. I would also appreciate
any advice on how to integrate it better with the current class
hierarchy (it is currently rather awkwardly grafted on) so I could get
user interface issues addressed as soon as possible.

If you want to take a look at what I've done so far, this is my repo:
http://code.google.com/p/idlecarpentry/source/checkout. The .json
files in the examples directory will bring up a trace window directly
when you open them and the .py files will bring up the editor, as
usual. Traces can be run from the editor window by selecting Run >
Create Trace, annotations are pulled from any line starting with #>
and applied to the first line of Python code which follows. I would
love to hear any about any bugs you find or UI friction you encounter.

I have been keeping a blog here http://cleichner.blogspot.com/, and
will be posting a screencast to it tomorrow.

Thanks,
Chas