python IDE requirements
I thought I’d record my feelings on what I want to see in a Python IDE. For the moment, I’m quite happy to stick with GEdit, but I might look at pulling something together later.
For GUI development, I want integrated Glade support. Maybe the Gazpacho editor could be built on.
Some sort of GUI similar to jUnit/NUnit for all unit tests. I should be able to hit a button and get a green or red bar at any time, with a tree drill-down to individual suites and tests.
A Refactoring menu that leverages BicycleRepairMan to automate common refactorings. Highlight code, select “Extract Method”, type method name, done.
A graphical, single-step debugger. The language has debugging capabilities built in, this should not be hard.
Syntax highlighting and decent indentation management (i.e., automatically adopt what the current file does). Code completion should be trivial to implement using class dictionaries.
Integration with Subversion (using pysvn) for source control commands. Having TRAC bug reports appear as TODO items is a cool extra.
Creating new projects should handle the usual open-source boilerplate (README, INSTALL, HACKING, ….) and allow selection of a license and default indentation policy.
Some sort of distutil magic would be good; especially for modules. Public modules intended to go into site-path versus private modules intended for a single application.
That’s all I really need. It’s not a huge feature list and one could leverage plenty of existing projects for most of the functionality. Like all good Python projects, it’s just about tying together good libraries.