Identifying your editors

Now that Django support is available, there are some niceties being added to make life more pleasant when dealing with files with the same name, which are very common when developing with Django (or any other application in the case of __init__.py).

There are 2 levels of support for those cases:

1. Really common files (__init__.py or in Django projects models.py, tests.py and views.py) have a special option in which the title of the editor is no longer the file name, but the name of the package containing that file, while a different icon is shown for those files (as the image below shows).





2. If there are 2 files that would be shown with the same name, PyDev will change the title of both to contain not only the name of the file, but also the name of the parent package.





Those options can be tweaked at the preferences (hope those are self-explanatory):





And with the icon available you already know it's Python right? -- So, there's an option to hide the file extensions from the tab title.

Those features are already available in the current nightly build (and will be available in the 1.5.7 release).

Hope you enjoy!

Pydev and virtualenv

A doubt that arises sometimes is how to use Pydev with virtualenv, so, here we go...

For those that don't know about it, virtualenv is a Python tool that allows one to configure a new Python interpreter that's 'sandboxed' based on an existing interpreter.

Sample use of virtualenv:

Say you have an interpreter in d:\bin\python26 (with easy_install in place).

You could do d:\bin\python26\scripts\easy_install.exe virtualenv to install virtualenv and later do:

d:\bin\Python26\Scripts\virtualenv.exe d:\bin\Python26django, which would create a new Python install at d:\bin\Python26django.

Later, you could add new libraries just at that Python install without disturbing the base install.

E.g.:
d:\bin\Python26django\Scripts\easy_install-2.6.exe django would install django at that interpreter without changing the default one.

Now, as far as Pydev is concerned, there's nothing special in configuring a regular interpreter or an interpreter available through virtualenv. It's just a matter of following the default steps (available at http://pydev.org/manual_101_interpreter.html) but pointing to the interpreter created by virtualenv (in this case d:\bin\Python26django\scripts\python.exe).

Note: For linux users, the instructions should be similar, but the created folder by virtualenv doesn't put the interpreter at a 'scripts' folder, but at a 'bin' folder.

Update: Note that when selecting a virtualenv interpreter, the folders from the base install won't come checked by default when adding the interpreter, so, those have to be manually selected.

Pydev 1.5.6 released / Django integration available

Pydev 1.5.6 has just been released (it's the same version as the last nightly build, so, if you were already in the last nightly build, there will be no upgrade available).

As commented before, the major highlight in this release is the Django integration.

There are more details on that at: http://pydev.org/manual_adv_django.html

Other additions worth commenting are:

* The go to definition (F3) now works with unsaved buffers

* Some improvements were done in the auto-edition to automatically close literals

* On backspace, the closing literal or parenthesis may be deleted

* Ctrl+2+s word to search can be used to search for a string in open editors (and that can no longer be done through the find/replace dialog)

Enjoy.

Django on Pydev (take #2)

It's nice that the previous post on Django on Pydev made so many people happy :)

There were many comments and I decided for writing a separate post to answer those and explain a bit better what should be the final state of the integration.

1. Django templates

There will be a special editor for that, but this will not be in the next release. This editor will be based upon the new Aptana Studio 3 (if you don't know about it, there's a preview explaining it at http://vimeo.com/channels/radrails#9895797). Initially it may be simpler (at least syntax highlighting and outline) and it should shape to have code-completion and other features in the future.

2. Custom Django actions

A new nightly has just been pushed with support for any custom action to manage.py. There's still room for improvement, like automatically going through the manage.py help and executing a command or asking help on that, but this won't be available for the upcoming release.

3. Code Analysis of Django

Most things should work as it is now, but I'm waiting for bug-reports saying what exactly Pydev fails to acknowledge on Django.

And that's it for the current plans... if there are more suggestions, they're very welcome!

Django on Pydev

The current nightly build (which will be 1.5.6) is already providing some special support for Django (special thanks to Leo Soto for providing a good base for building upon).

There are still some details until the final release, but I'd like to get some feedback before that.

The special support goes in the following:

1. Create a 'Pydev Django' project (will use django to create a manage.py, settings.py and urls.py)



2. For an existing project, just right click it and choose 'Pydev > Set as Django project)'




3. Custom Django actions can be accessed right clicking a project with the Django config and choosing Django > action.



4. Note that the Shell with django environment will create a shell properly configured with your settings, providing the default features from the pydev shell, such as code completion, history, context assistants (ctrl+1), etc (see: http://pydev.org/manual_adv_interactive_console.html for more details)




5. Run as Django/Debug as Django are available (note that they set the --no-reload by default, otherwise the debugger may have some issues and other processes may be kept alive when closing the process spawned by Pydev).



And that's it. It's all there in the nightly build already (I still have some features and minor adjustments to do, but that should already give a good idea of what will be available, and I'm waiting for feedback to know if there's something missing that really should be there).