IDE/Develpment Environment for Python?

[Chopstick]

Hi Folks,
I was wondering if anyone could recommend a good IDE (integrated development environment) for Python.
I'm going to do some coding for a scientific computing project that mostly uses Python+Numpy+SciPy, but also some code in C/C++ and personally I would like to add a significant component in Fortran 95.

So far I have been coding a lot in Matlab and also some Fortran, but mostly in Windows (I'm fairly new to Linux). I'm probably a bit spoiled from the Matlab GUI/IDE and Debugger; for Fortran I used Notepadd++ (in Windows), which I found to be excellent! (Unfortunately it is not available in Linux.)

I've been toying around a bit with Kdevelop, but the debugger does not seem to work and I don't see an integrated Python shell. I also tried Eric4, but that seems to be limited to Python. Kdevelop would hopefully work better with Fortran.

I found both IDEs not very convincing, but I didn't try too hard to configure them. In particular the Debuggers seem to be very "minimal" and inconvenient to use (different from Matlab at least...).

Does anyone have a good recommendation for either a multilingual IDE or a Python IDE? And are there any tutorials out there on how to set them up for Python? (I did not find any in Google...)

The project is scientific, which means there will be a lot of number-crunching and interfacing with different data formats and C/Fortran libs. No GUI development.

Any comments and opinions are highly appreciated!

Chopstick

P/S: If anyone is in Earth/Atmospheric/Geo/Planetary Science and interested in data analysis / scientific programming, you are welcome to join the Project ;-) It will be Open Source - that's why we want to use Python rather than Matlab and use an open source IDE!

[dibl]

Re: IDE/Develpment Environment for Python?

Alberto Milone is a Python developer -- perhaps he could advise you.

http://albertomilone.com/

[tnorris]

Re: IDE/Develpment Environment for Python?

Eclipse + Pydev is my IDE of choice for python.

[SteveWC]

Re: IDE/Develpment Environment for Python?

Have you tried the free "Komodo Edit 5.2" or nonfree "Komodo Ide 5.2" from www.ActiveState.com, both offer multi-programming language support. Have used Komodo Edit for programming Python, works good for me.

[Chopstick]

Re: IDE/Develpment Environment for Python?

Is that Komodo Editor open source? I would very much prefer an open source IDE.
- Chopstick

[SteveWC]

Re: IDE/Develpment Environment for Python?

Yes! this is what it states on the ActiveStates website about Komodo Edit "A free and open source editor based on the award-winning Komodo IDE." The Komodo Ide is not free, cost about $295.

[tnorris]

Re: IDE/Develpment Environment for Python?

Did you try Eclipse with the pydev plugin? It actually works quite well. Don't use the versions from the Ubuntu repos though. The ones in the repos are ancient. Download them directly from their websites. (http://eclipse.org and http://pydev.org)

[Chopstick]

Re: IDE/Develpment Environment for Python?

So I installed Eclipse and PyDev and it seems to work; I was also testing Eric4. Both seem to be quite similar in features. Eric seems to be a bit simpler to use, since it is only for Python; Eclipse seems to take more time to configure.

On the other hand, it appears to be very convenient to have the same IDE for all languages: is the Eclipse-Plugin for Fortran (Photran?) good?
I will be switching and interfacing a lot between Fortran (for number crunching) and Python (for structure). There are also parallelization tools, as I have seen.

Or does anyone have experience with Fortran in KDevelop?

I think my options now are Eclipse (with PyDev and Photran?) or Eric4 (for Python) and KDevelop (for Fortran).

[Chopstick]

Re: IDE/Develpment Environment for Python?

Somewhat off-topic: tnorris recommends installing the latest releases (or at least not the ones from the repositories). I've done that a couple of times, too, as I agree that some apps in the repos are outdated (or as good as broken, in the case of Kile).

Would you generally recommend to uninstall the repo version before installing manually (maybe even a complete removal?)?

Also I heard of this program called checkinstall - can you recommend that?

- Chopstick

[tnorris]

Re: IDE/Develpment Environment for Python?

Somewhat off-topic: tnorris recommends installing the latest releases (or at least not the ones from the repositories). I've done that a couple of times, too, as I agree that some apps in the repos are outdated (or as good as broken, in the case of Kile).

Would you generally recommend to uninstall the repo version before installing manually (maybe even a complete removal?)?

Also I heard of this program called checkinstall - can you recommend that?

- Andre

99% of the time I try to install from the repos, but the versions of eclipse and pydev are just so old I can't stand missing all the function in the newer versions.

As far as getting rid of the repo version you certainly could but I don't think it's strictly necessary. I actually have like 4 or 5 versions of eclipse on my Kubuntu install because I run alot of IBM applications build on top of eclipse (e.g. Notes, Sametime, Symphony). Of course, I'm not sure why you'd want to run the old and new version of the IDE though.

I've heard of checkinstall as well but I've not used it. I think for eclipse it's not really necessary because all of it is contained under the eclipse subdirectory so deleting that directory completely uninstalls it.

[askrieger]

Re: IDE/Develpment Environment for Python?

You might want to consider using EMACS as a lightweight development environment. Personally, I use it for Bash, C, C++, and Fortran. It is capable of creating, compiling (if you have the appropriate compilers installed), and debugging both compiled and scripting languages. I've never been a big Python fan so I can't vouch for that.

[GreyGeek]

Re: IDE/Develpment Environment for Python?

The repository has boa-constructor, which is a gui rad tool featuring Python. It as drag & drop widgets on forms to create user interfaces, database connectors, etc.... IF I were not using Qt I'd use Python & Boa-constructor.

boa-constructor is in the repository!