Java support

Since the 2.15.7 release, motor supports Java. Though it's not that deep and great Java support JBuilder has. Motor cannot even debug Java programs, though it's planned for the future. What it can do about this nice language is just support its syntax and generate appropriable Makefiles with automake. Also, motor calls java VM to run a program from the IDE.

You need to have JDK and path to your javac and java binaries present on your PATH environment variable. To create a Java program just follow the standard project creation procedure. Don't forget to select the "terminal program/java" template for it. In the main class of your project, (that what's the "Result file name" from the "Project settings" dialog points to) you should have the standard public static void main() method, which is run when you press F12. That's all to it.

Other nifty facilities

We were often bothered by the fact that `gdb' stepped inside the standard template library (STL) source when passing parameters of string type, lists, vectors and other stuff. That's why we decided to implement an option not to step inside the standard headers when debugging. You can control such a behavior with the "Debug standard headers" option in the "Motor settings" dialog.

If we add some non-standard targets to the Makefile, motor is unable to execute them. But this is taken care by the new "Make a target" item in the "Project" sub-menu. You can add any targets there that are executed from motor, which shows their output.

Plans for future releases

We are frequently asked questions like: "What are you planning to implement in the next release of motor?" Well, here are the some features we plan to include in the future.

CVS front-end improvement

While using our self-made front-end for CVS with motor, we found something we may also need. Aside from checking in and out, viewing the file modification history and module releases, it would be really great to have a branching facility and ability to view `diffs' CVS can generate. Implementing this is a priority.

Regexper tool

This small feature can be of interest to those who like regular expressions and use it in their everyday programming. This will be a dialog that allows construction of regexps. It will try matching to various strings specified and if everything is ok, provide the programmer the ability to insert it into the source.

Sending signals to a program being run