IPython & PyDev

In the current nightly build (see: http://pydev.org/download.html to get it), IPython can be used as the backend for the PyDev interactive console.

IPython is a Python shell that provides many improvements over the standard Python shell (more details may be found at http://ipython.org/ ).

To use it, install IPython (0.10.x or 0.11) in your Python interpreter (if you use easy-install, just do easy_install ipython), make sure that the IPython paths are properly added in your interpreter configuration inside of PyDev ( http://pydev.org/manual_101_interpreter.html ) and start up the interactive console in PyDev ( http://pydev.org/manual_adv_interactive_console.html ). If all is properly configured, the interactive shell should use IPython as the backend (if it's not found, it'll fallback to the standard PyDev shell and warn that IPython could not be found).

Another improvement in the shell is that the output for a long running command will now be printed while it's executing, and not only after it returns.

I'm waiting for feedback to know if there's something missing in the integration before a final release is provided with the integration...

Interactive console in Pydev

Last week I started working on an interactive console and bundling it into pydev. Hopefully it'll be finished soon (probably within the next 1-2 weeks).

The main structure is already in place... code-completion, context info on hover, history (up/down arrow), colors for stdout/err/prompt/user input, auto-indent, python/jython support, it's all there already... (but I want to add an extra layer of polishment before releasing it).

Under the hood, it's almost like a whole new editor covering the console, while communicating through sockets with a python shell (but it feels a lot like a regular editor, in the sense that the same options that are used in the editor for indent, code completion, etc. are also available from the console -- with the exception that you can actually only edit the active line).

Also, this time I was able to get some code that had an initial draft of a console from dltk (which was pretty nice), but I had to do some (not so minor) changes to be able to add it to pydev, although the basic structure still has the same idea (the result can be seen at org.python.pydev/src_dltk_console).

Well, to sum it up... this is a long-awaited feature, and the plans are for surpassing all expectations on that :)