This is terrific progress for our JRuby/SWT port. JavaMateView is the syntax highlighting editor component, which is the core of Redcar. We can now proceed with porting the rest of Redcar onto JRuby. And for free, we have complete cross platform compatibility:

Windows 7

Ubuntu,

and Mac OS X

I have now started making Redcar itself work on JRuby, which is going to take considerably longer. I want to do this right, so I’ve got a reading list on GUI architecture as long as my arm. If anyone has any good suggestions for further reading, please speak up!

As of now, Redcar HEAD will boot on JRuby, but all the plugins are turned off except for a very small core. There’s a long way to go yet, but I’m very happy with our progress so far.

GtkMateView

GtkMateView is the syntax highlighter component of Redcar. At the moment it is written in Vala, a fine C#-style language for the GObject system.  In order to run Redcar on JRuby, this GUI widget needs to be ported to Java.

Silvio, myself and Aokai have begun this and our work is on Github here. Porting from Vala to Java (like porting from C# to Java) is a fairly efficient process. Tedious - but efficient. We have already got several large classes, in particular the syntax Patterns and the Scope matcher, working in Java. This project will be 100% Java.

Redcar

Redcar is written in Ruby with GTK+. We need to port over Redcar from using GTK to using SWT, and make sure that everything still works on JRuby. Almost every class in Redcar will be touched by this change.

I would like to separate the plugins into two groups, the core models and the gui interfaces. So the core plugin will be split into core and core-swt, the project plugin into project and project-swt. Almost all the features can be moved over without change, although the step definitions will need to be rewritten.

We can turn off most plugins at the start and turn them back on one-by-one as we port them. So we should have a basic application frame up and running fairly soon. We also need to make sure that Cucumber and RSpec are working. Once that is done, porting of the plugins can happen in parallel, so people who want to help out can grab one and start.

We also need to get packaging sorted out from the start to avoid difficulty later. Silvio has been looking into this and it seems that we will be able to wrap up all of Redcar into a single .jar file before we are done (though we will still need Debian packages on top of that).

So Milestone 1 for the Redcar port is:

1. Working application frame.
2. Cucumber hooked up.
3. RSpec hooked up.
4. Single jar file packaging.

With a bit of luck, we can reach this sometime next week, which will give us a secure base for the rest of the work.

Good night!

After a long struggle with our current platform, we have decided that it is best for the future of Redcar if we port it to JRuby. This will mean switching to another GUI toolkit, which we have identified as SWT. There are a lot of reasons for this (anyone who is interested can check the mailing list for details), but we expect the move to result in

• improved stability,
• more accessible source code,
• easier packaging,
• better cross-platform support.

We’re going to try and get this over with as quickly as possible, I’ll be pulling double shifts and Silvio and Henrik and a few others are jumping in too.

If you’d like to be involved in Redcar, this is a great opportunity to get started and help out, so please drop by the mailing list or IRC channel.

See you on the other side!

I might have waited a bit longer before tagging this release, but I’m going to be very busy with work for a few weeks and I wanted to get what fixes there were out there for people to use.

This is still alpha-quality software! Use at your own risk and if there is something missing you need, add it! We will commit patches promptly.

New contributers

• Mark Wilkinson
• Pat Ciambrone
• poweradapter
• Henrik Hodne

New features, enhancements

• Fuzzy file finder notices new files and runs MUCH faster.
• Undo close tab (Ctrl+Shift+T)
• Type ” or ( or [ etc to wrap selection in pair.
• Warm startup 3 times faster.
• Added Incremental Search menu item.
• Now prompts to save if file is modified when closed.
• HtmlTab now uses Webkit instead of Mozilla
• Convert case commands
• Keybindings match up with Gnome better (Ctrl+C/V)
• Added Scala and Haskell bundles to the default bundle set.
• Included Railscasts theme - thanks Ryan Bates!

I am a little disappointed that neither the bundle support nor the performance of the syntax highlighter have significantly improved in this release, and they will be the priorities for 0.3.

Installing

The installation instructions are slightly changed. In particular there are no longer any release tarballs. You have to clone the source from git. Sorry, there are still no Debian packages, but we are working on getting some ready.

Plans for 0.3

Some things 0.3 will have:

• Improved highlighter performance - I am aware of the various issues around this. There is plenty of low-hanging fruit in this area.
• Autocompletion - Silvio Heuberger is working on this.
• A new smart indenter. In particular, it should handle indentation correctly in erb files.
• RSpec, Rails and Cucumber bundles should all work
• An embedded project pane (so the project view will no longer be in a tab).

That Railscasts theme in action:

Best wishes, and thanks to everyone who has expressed support for Redcar!

DBL

Here is a screenshot of the fuzzy file finder:

Progress:

• I really am using Redcar full time, at work and at home now, and Redcar has become much more stable in recent weeks.
• However there remain a number of serious bugs related to the editing component. Users should be careful to save regularly.
• The Text bundle commands are completely supported, and the Source and Ruby bundles are close behind.
• I am aware that installation is beyond difficult. However the nature of Redcar’s dependencies makes packaging a challenge. I am considering a Shoes model for distribution (Shoes has an amazing installation experience), and if anyone has any experience with packaging software for Linux, please get on the mailing list and share.

• I’m giving a talk on Redcar at LRUG on March 9th.
• I’ve been getting up at 5:30AM so I can do an hour of Redcar before work. Things are therefore progressing a bit more rapidly now.
• There is now a new repository of bundles for use with the Redcar project. redcar-bundles. I am working on porting the Textmate bundles over to work with Redcar. This is mainly the Support libraries, I’m trying not to touch the bundles at all so we can maintain cross-compatibility.
• We’re now using Zerenity as a CocoaDialog replacement. Zerenity was written by Farrel Lifson as a Ruby port of Zenity, the Gnome command-line dialog application. Farrel has also been good enough to implement a couple of new features and make it available as a gem for Redcar users.
• The bug tracker is being used consistently now. And I am totally converted to Lighthouse nowadays

Have another screenshot too:

1. There is now a bug tracker online at redcar.lighthouseapp.com. Please send your problems there, and I’ll get on the case.
2. Simple macros (no saving) now work. I was pleased with how easy this was to implement, probably only about 30 lines of code.

I hope you recognize this theme:

1. There is a Redcar twitter feed at http://twitter.com/_redcar. I’ll post short news and updates there, in the same fashion as http://twitter.com/datamapper.
2. People have been asking for a bug tracker for Redcar. I did have a Redmine instance set up for Redcar, and I’ll get it back online again when I can.
3. I’ve been away on holiday for a week or so, which is why I missed the comments in the IRC channel. Back now.
4. Would the commenter ‘R’ from the last post please get in touch, I may be able to help with the problem you’re having. Please email me at dan@fluentradical.com

It’s been a while since I posted a screenshot: