SoC Ideas Eclipse Plugin2011

This page is related to Summer of Code 2011

See the list of Summer of Code 2011 Ideas

This is a Summer of Code 2011 Idea

Enhance & polish the Wesnoth Eclipse Plugin

More info at SoC_Ideas_Eclipse_Plugin2011

A java-based Eclipse plugin was created in 2010 to allow easier creation and modification of User-Made Content for Wesnoth. You should extend this work and polish existing features in terms of usability and performance, and add new features.

There is 1 submitted student proposal for this idea

timotei - Improving the Eclipse Plugin

I aim at improving the plugin, so it will become the tool used by all UMC Authors. That is, UMC Authors will get rid of the lot of different tools they use for different tasks (for example the Emacs WMLMode/other plugins for different text editors), and instead use one single unified Tool that will speed up the development. My target is to make this plugin a complete and very stable suite for all umc tasks that don't need specialized software - like a graphics editor, so I'd like to have this oportunity to finish it in the good sense.
See SummerofCode2011 Timotei21 for more information.

Additional Information

General plugin information

Current plugin's webpage: http://eclipse.wesnoth.org/

Older (but may be still actual for some points) page: http://wiki.wesnoth.org/SoC_Ideas_Eclipse_Plugin

The plugin is available in the utils/java directory of the repository.

The plugin uses Xtext [1] for the editor component which provides a very good DSL framework to be used with the WML language.

Support for multiple Wesnoth installations

- There should be support for handling multiple Wesnoth installations, each one of them with different binaries/wml tools and so on.

- The user should be able to use the feature in an easy way that should restart the eclipse workspace as few as possible.

Enhance the autocomplete feature

The current autocomplete feature works just for a small amount of keys/tags. There should be an easy way (possibly even allow non-eclipse-plugin developers to modify it) specifying the tags we want to autocomplete on or implement autocomplete for:

- events
- variables
- attributes
- attributes values - e.g.: true/false, yes/no
- macros

Plugin documentation

The plugin is lacking proper documentation. There is only a readme [2] that specifies just a quick overview of the plugin. To gain more popularity it should be much more documented:

- Create some usage videos, showing off the cool features: wizards, auto-complete, macro navigation
- Create multiple step-by-step readme documents for different wizards

Automatic/headless building

Currently the plugin and it's update site is built "in-house". That means you have to pop eclipse, clear current version, and run the build again. There should be a way of automatic - without the need for eclipse - building the plugin's update site & creating the standalone build also.

Other ideas

You can also give other ideas you think are worthy to be implemented.

Possible pre-gsoc tasks

- Make yourself familiar with basic WML syntax.
- Try the emacs plugin (data/tools/emacs_mode) to see an example of a wml ide.
- Install the eclipse UMC plugin and use it to write a simple campaign or multiplayer scenario.
- The eclipse framework allow great customization. Thus, a project can have it's own properties. Add a new tab for wesnoth nature projects, which has wesnoth specific properties. The tab can have a dummy label/checkbox at first.
- Create a menu item which clears all current configured files by the wesnoth plugin. This will allow users to reset their configuration on the plugin.

Whom to ask about this

If you want more information regarding the plugin please contact timotei/timotei21 on IRC. The mentor of the last gsoc eclipse plugin project was fendrin on IRC.