Eric (software)

eric

eric4 running in KDE SC 4
Original author(s)	Detlev Offenbach
Developer(s)	Detlev Offenbach
Initial release	2002 (2002)
Stable release	6.1.4 / April 9, 2016 (2016-04-09)
Development status	active
Written in	Python
Operating system	Cross-platform
Platform	Python, Qt
Available in	English, German, French, Russian, Czech, Spanish, Italian, Turkish, Chinese
Type	Integrated Development Environment
License	GPL "version 3 or later"
Alexa rank	594,716
Website	eric-ide.python-projects.org

eric is an integrated development environment used for computer programming.

eric is written in Python and its primary use is for developing software written in Python, but it also supports the development of software written in many other programming languages, whereby the level of support of Ruby reaches the support of Python.

License, price and distribution

eric is licensed under the GNU General Public License "version 3 or later" and is thereby Free Software. This means that the source code of eric can be studied, changed and improved by anyone, that eric can be run for any purpose by anyone and that eric - and any changes or improvements that may have been made to it - can be redistributed by anyone without limitations.

The author distributes eric without charge; he provides an option for voluntary donations via PayPal on his homepage.

eric can be downloaded at Sourceforge and installed manually with a python installer script.^[1] Most major GNU/Linux distributions include eric in their software repositories, so when using such GNU/Linux distributions eric can be obtained and installed automatically by using the package manager of the particular distribution.^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5]^[6] Additionally, the author offers access to the source code via a public Mercurial repository.^[7]

Characteristics and Features

eric is written in Python and uses the PyQt Python bindings for the Qt GUI toolkit. By design, eric acts as a front end for several programs, for example the QScintilla editor widget, the python language interpreter, Rope for code refactoring and Python Profiler for code profiling.

eric is a full featured IDE, providing by default all necessary tools needed for the writing of code and for the management of a software project. For further functionality, eric is extensible via a plug-in mechanism. The eric plug-in repository provides various kinds of extensions and is accessible from within the IDE.

The key features of eric 6 are:^[8]

Source code editing:
- Unlimited number of editors
- Configurable window layout
- Configurable syntax hilighting
- Sourcecode autocompletion
- Sourcecode calltips
- Sourcecode folding
- Brace matching
- Error highlighting
- Advanced search functionality including project wide search and replace
- Integrated class browser
- Integrated profiling and code coverage support

GUI designing:
- Integration of Qt Creator, a Graphical user interface builder for the creation of Qt based Graphical user interfaces

Debugging, checking, testing and documenting:
- Integrated graphical python debugger which supports both interactive probing while suspended and auto breaking on exceptions as well as debugging multi-threaded and multiprocessing applications
- Integrated automatic code checkers (syntax, errors and style, PEP-8) for static program analysis as well as support of Pylint via plug-in
- Integrated source code documentation system
- Integrated unit testing support by having the option to run python code with command-line parameters
- Integrated interface to the enchant spell checking library
- Application diagrams

Version control:
- Integrated version control support for Mercurial and Subversion repositories (as core plug-ins) and git (as optional plug-in)

Project management and collaboration:
- Advanced project management facilities
- Integrated task management with a self-updating TODO list
- Integrated cooperation functions (chat, shared editor)

Other:
- Integrated web browser
- Integrated support for Django (as optional plug-in)
- Running external applications from within the IDE
- Interactive Python shell including syntax hilighting and autocompletion
- Integrated CORBA support based on omniORB
- Integrated rope refactoring tool (as optional plug-in)
- Integrated interface to cx_freeze (as optional plug-in)
- Many integrated wizards for regex and Qt dialogs (as core plug-ins)
- Tools for previewing Qt forms and translations

Support for Python 2 and 3

Prior to the release of eric version 6, eric version 4 and eric version 5 coexisted and where maintained simultaneously, while eric 4 was the variant for writing software in Python version 2 and eric version 5 was the variant for writing software in Python version 3.

With the release of eric version 6 both variants had been merged into one, so that all versions as of eric version 6 support writing software in Python 2 as well as in Python 3, making eric version 4 and 5 obsolete. eric version 4 and 5 are no longer maintained.

Name

Several allusions are made to the British comedy group Monty Python, which the Python programming language is named after. Eric alludes to Eric Idle, a member of the group, and IDLE, the standard python IDE shipped with most distributions.

External links

Official website
Official Mercurial repository information
Sourceforge repository of eric
Linux.com "My experiences with Eric, a Python IDE", 2009

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Friday, May 06, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.