How Useful Is Slickedit For Ada?

[fritzeflink]

I switched from Slickedit to Visual Studio when VS 2012 came out and haven't used it in the meantime. I am now considering to return when the new Slickedit version comes out. In the meantime I downloaded Slilckedit 2013 trial version to check how useful it is with Ada files, since I am also dabbling in that language recently.

My first test is quite disappointing. There is no Ada project setting when creating a new project (one has to select "other"). Ok that means I have to recreate my Ada project for Slickedit manually, I can live with that.

What puts me off is that I cant seem to have a way to go to the definition of a procedure. I always end up in the ADS file and there seems to be no way to go to the ADB file with the procedure body. When I do a "reference search" the actual subprogram body shows up with a "?" which shows me that Slickedit doesn't even understand the structure of an Ada program, which is probably why it can't take me to the body.  No support of automated function comments either and probably a host of other flaws I haven't found yet.

Now before I spend more time digging into this deeper only to find out that I rather stay with the GPS environment, I wonder: Are there any users who actually use Slickedit for Ada? Because at the moment, it doesn't appear to be any good here. Looks like it's still mostly focused on C++, Java, etc and has the other languages more like an alibi so that it can boast the number of languages it's "supports".

[Graeme]

I'm not using ADA but judging from the size of the slick C files ada.e and adaformat.e there's quite a bit of support for it so I suspect that tagging should work fairly well.  Try tools -> options, enter ada in the search box, then go to "context tagging" for ada and see what "prioritize navigation" is set to.

Otherwise, I'm guessing that if you post a minimal code example that demonstrates the problem in the V19 beta forum, it might get fixed for V19  - just guessing.

If you search on google for
site:community.slickedit.com ada
there's not many people using ada here, or if there are, they're not having any problems. 

[fritzeflink]

Thanks for the answer,
I guess there is not much interest on the slickedit corporation side to improve Ada support, none of them seem to care about my post. I also understand that Ada is not a big market for them so they dont want to spend any resources on fixing problems there. Lastly I think, from what I hear in the Ada newsgroups etc, that nobody there mentions Slickedit, probably because it's support of Ada is buggy, the people I talked with either use Gide or Adacore Libre GPS as the editor of choice.
I was merely looking into Slickedit again because I liked the Class browser when I was using it for C++ and naturally assumed, since slickedit boasts all these many language supports, that the same quality of care would be put in supporting the other languages, but I guess it's merely a marketing gimmick and the main focus is on the C++/Java/Python etc community. Since the new version is coming up I wanted to give it a try so that I could unify my C++ and Ada programing work in one editor. It would have been better than using two different IDEs all the time, but I guess, in my case, I stick with Visual Studio/WholeTomato and Adacore

[Graeme]

Hi
Just because no-one from Slickedit responded to your post you shouldn't take it to mean they don't care about ADA.  They're currently very busy getting a new release finished which is much later than usual and they also recently had some distractions fighting a patent troll scumbag...
I don't think SlickEdit favours any one language any more  - C++ used to be the favourite.  I know they always appreciate getting bug reports no matter what language so if you can post a specific problem it may well get looked at.  They're probably not going to spend a week or more adding enhancements to ADA if very few people use ADA and people are constantly asking for support for new languages.  I see on Wikipedia there was a new version of ADA in 2012 so maybe SlickEdit isn't up to date with ADA 2012 but basic things like go to definition should work in most cases.  BTW - you can create a new project template for ADA projects  - Project -> new -> customize -> new.

If you're evaluating SlickEdit for purchase, you should also send your questions to the support people directly, you will get an answer of some kind.

[hs2]

@fritzeflink: You should be a bit more patient when posting a question here instead of contacting support. Also you might have noticed SlickEdit is trying hard to get a new release done and is running an intense beta cycle. Given that 2 days is little time to expect a qualified answer to your question, right 
.. So I agree with Graeme who was a lot faster with his reply .. But I'm using an iPad right now and not my workstation
HS2

[rgloden]

We use SlickEdit with Ada95 and it works amazingly well.  There are a few language constructs like "renames" that SE doesn't deal with and sometimes it doesn't resolve an overloaded symbol (where it could have been narrowed down based on the "with" tree) but for the most part SE gets it right.  Many of the Ada language issues that we have officially reported to customer support have been fixed.  I don't know but I would guess that Ada is one of the better supported non-mainsteam languages.

[fritzeflink]

Then I must do something wrong. First all my Ada files show up under "other" in the project filetree, not in source or header files, and like I said, I can click on any identifier, it only leads me to the specification in the ADS file, never to the body .
I understand that Slickedit is a highly complicated application and that it may take a lot of work to find the right settings and I dont expect them to spend alot of time with a language that only few customers use. I will fiddle around with it a bit more, but right now I dont see what I could be doing wrong, so I have not much hope to find whatever it is that needs to be fixed.

[hs2]

@fritzeflink: I'd propose to make up a tiny example and send it to support along with a short description what's going on vs. your expectation.
This helps the SE team a lot to provide a solution in a timely manner and to improve the product if necessary.

Besides the fact that there might be not so many Ada users in general I could imagine that some of those have good connections to SE.
Hence I think Ada is not irrelevant for SE and is actively maintained. Just guessing...
HS2

[fritzeflink]

I dont think that will do much good, as rgloden pointed out, he is using Slickedit with Ada, so it must be something on my side I guess, probably that I dont understand how to set up an Ada project or so.

[fritzeflink]

Ok, after rgloden said he is having good results I tried once more and it seems that the specific problems that frustrated me came from the fact that I have lots of package bodies in separate compilation units and slick edit doesn't seem to be able to find those. When I use simple specification and body files, Slickedit finds the function bodies.
I am going to experiement a bit further with the 2013 trial version. The last version that I owned, I believe it was version 16 or 17, did not do a very good job with the beautifier, in fact it pretty much messed up the format but I read somewhere it was a bug that was fixed in a later version, so I will have a particular eye on these issues.

[Clark]

Ok, after rgloden said he is having good results I tried once more and it seems that the specific problems that frustrated me came from the fact that I have lots of package bodies in separate compilation units and slick edit doesn't seem to be able to find those. When I use simple specification and body files, Slickedit finds the function bodies.
I am going to experiement a bit further with the 2013 trial version. The last version that I owned, I believe it was version 16 or 17, did not do a very good job with the beautifier, in fact it pretty much messed up the format but I read somewhere it was a bug that was fixed in a later version, so I will have a particular eye on these issues.

Please post a small sample where tag navigation fails. Maybe we can tweak our tagging for v19.

[rgloden]

... um yea ... well Ada separates are a problem ... just not a problem that affects me (don't use alot of seperates).

As far a Ada pretty printing goes, it isn't too bad though sometimes the comment indentations can be unexpected (e.g. like before the Ada constructs else or elsif).  The problem with formatting is that everyone, even on the same team, has opinions on what is best.

[Clark]

Please post some sample source where tag navigation fails. Thanks

[fritzeflink]

Here are a few files from my unit test setup. The files they are supposed to test are not included, bot those files work because I don't use SEPARATE there.
Just make a simple project, add these files and then try to go to the bodies of the various TEST subprograms and you will end up only with the specifications in the ADS files and never get to the ADB files.

[Lee]

I have downloaded your sample files and will take at look at how we are currently tagging is working.  Could you point to specific examples of where things are not working as expected in this sample?  And what are the expect results you would expect in those examples.