Vis Lua Design

wiki

Proposal / Features

A Lua IDE would be nice. The primary focus is on a debugger as there are plenty of Lua editors available ([1] and LuaEditorSupport). Components of VisLua could include the following. The mockups below have been created (in Borland C++ Builder) to give an idea of the project goal.

Debugger

• Usable from command line and through a GUI. Platforms which are not supported by the GUI library or applications which choose not to use a GUI should be able to use the debugger.
• Single step, run etc. Usual functionality.
• Optionally view source and VM code merged for understanding of VM eg. like VmMerge.
• GUI for the editor is written in Lua and calls the debug VisLua library.

Editor

• Written in Lua using the GUI library.
• Features may include: syntax highlighting, insertion of breakpoints and watchpoints etc
• Fully configurable: Custom key bindings, Lua macros, project manager, chnage locale etc.
• Context sensitive help: jumps straight to manual link and possibly sample and source code.
• View source and VM code merged to help with optimisation and understanding of VM eg. like VmMerge.
• If a simple framework is established I'm sure its functionality would grow rapidly.

Interactive console

• Similar to IDLE in Python [2] ie. syntax highlighted.

Comments on design

• <comments please> --Name