Thursday, May 15, 2014

Crowdfunding for PyDev and new Python profiler UI (for any IDE)

Ok, I just started a crowdfunding project (at http://tiny.cc/pydev-2014) for the continued development of PyDev and the creation of a new profiler UI.

This is actually the 2nd crowdfunding for PyDev after Appcelerator stopped supporting it. Last year a similar crowdfunding allowed me to keep on developing PyDev until now, as well as creating a new PyDev/Eclipse bundle called LiClipse, which added lightweight support for several languages as well a dark theme inside Eclipse.


So, now I'm reaching out again for the PyDev community to allow me to keep on developing PyDev and shaping the Python landscape.


This year when planning what to do and filtering on existing requests, one of the things that stood up was providing proper support for profiling in PyDev.


After tinkering with the idea a bit and trying to find out how I think would be the best way for this workflow, I've settled on creating a separate tool and then integrating it properly in PyDev... not only this approach will allow Pythonistas that don't use PyDev to have a nice profiling companion, but I think it'll also yield better results than doing it all inside of Eclipse -- besides, I'll be able to do it all in Python!


So, this is the main feature I've planned for this year, but there are others too which are more focused on PyDev itself, such as having preferences per-project, migrating to a new workspace, validating docstrings for its type on a test run, external pep8 linter, vertical lines for indentation, attach debugger to running process -- besides the usual bugfixing and support.


So, please help in funding (and sharing) at http://tiny.cc/pydev-2014 to help in making the new profiler UI a reality and to keep PyDev going strong!



6 comments:

Matthias said...

Oi Fabio, can you please support Bitcoin as payment system, too?

Fabio Zadrozny said...

Hi Matthias,

Interesting... I think it may be a possibility, but I'm not really familiar on using Bitcoin, so, can you give me some pointers on how to do that?

I.e.: How to accept it and how to actually convert those Bitcoins later on to actual USD -- as in the end that's how I need it...

Gaëtan de Menten said...

Like for your last crowd-funding campaign, I will not participate in it because I have no guarantee the parts that interest me the most (the profiler in this case) will get open-sourced. It is a choice I understand and respect, but I just want to point out that you are also loosing some potential backers.

Fabio Zadrozny said...

Hi, Gaëtan de Menten.

I realize that the all or nothing (i.e.: fixed-funding) campaign has its merits on that, but I thought that making sure you'd get something if you contribute even if the full target wasn't achieved would be better than not getting anything at all... (i.e.: you'd only be in the situation it's not open source if the funding failed in the first place and you'd end up with nothing anyways).

Guess it's a valid point of view though (even if I don't share it), so, thanks for sharing it :)

Gaëtan de Menten said...

Well, you deserve a more complete explanation. The thing is that my goal in participation in such a funding is to advance the state of open-source dev tools. If I wanted a good proprietary IDE, there are many other options out there (though, I don't know whether or not any of them has a decent integration with the Python profilers).
Honestly, your approach is probably better as I think most people care more about what they get than what others get. For me, it is the opposite.

I am also unsure it is possible to find a crowd funding format which would both make it financially viable for you and make sure the "open source" knights (like me) only pay if the thing gets open-sourced, but if you do, drop me a note.

Fabio Zadrozny said...

Hi Matthias,

I've added Bitcoin as a payment system too...

See the end of the page in : https://sw-brainwy.rhcloud.com/support/pydev-2014/

Best Regards,

Fabio