EiffelStudio 6.0 Features

Revision as of 09:39, 26 April 2007 by Bmeyer (Talk | contribs) (General)


This page highlights some of the major feature changes between version 5.7 and the forthcoming 6.0 release of EiffelStudio.

It is not a detailed log of changes and additions, but only lists the key new mechanisms directly improving the quality of the user experience. For the 6.0 change log see EiffelStudio Releases.

EiffelStudio (General)

  • New docking manager graphical interface
  • Tabbed editing of multiple classes within the same window
  • Internationalization (English, French, Chinese, German and Russian)
  • Contextual menu
  • All keyboard shortcuts are configurable

New Tools

  • Dependency tool
  • Customized tools/formatters
  • Object viewer

Debugger

General

  • Along with the debugger integrated in the EiffelStudio GUI, you can now use a console-based debugger. Start it from the command line through -debug or via -loop.
  • Enhancements to the breakpoint mechanism: print messages, hit count for conditions, new "Is True" and "Has Changed" conditions.
  • Numerous improvements to the performance and robustness of the debugger.

Expression evaluation (watch tool, condition ...)

  • Added support of instruction evaluation (i.e: procedure call).
  • Expression are evaluated with all assertions turned off by default (the user can restore assertion checking on each expression)
  • Completed support for disable/restore assertion checking during debugging in classic AND dotnet system.

Graphic debugger

  • Redesign Debugging options dialog:
    • Better dialog to set the arguments, working directory.
    • The user can now add or modify the environment variables used by the debuggee.
    • Added start (outside the IDE) workbench and finalized system on Debugging option dialogs
  • User can restart the debugging session without unraising and raising again the debugger's interface
  • User can force the environment to stay in debugger mode.
  • New object viewer tool to browse an object, dump its structured or textual representation, or see XML in a tree.
  • Call stack tool now indicates when a feature has a "rescue" clause.
  • Cleaned objects grid by removing useless "Attributes" title row.
  • The debugger shows state of "Once functions" and now also state of "Once procedures".
  • Added auto expressions on watch tools

Eiffel Language/Compiler

Libraries

  • Encoding library