Improve development & IDE tools

[samreid]

@ariel-phet requested this issue to see if we can improve IDE support/etc to speed up our development process.

[samreid]

Automatically creating a require statement would be nice (I think there is another issue for that somewhere).

[samreid]

#595 demonstrated one way to add development tooling

[samreid]

I'd like to see if the same approach will work for adding require statements, it shouldn't take too long. Tagging @ariel-phet so he is aware I'm taking a look at this.

[samreid]

I added a script to add require statements with a keystroke, committed above. Configured in IDEA like this:

preferences -> tools -> external tools:

program: grunt
parameters: insert-require-statement --file=$FilePath$ --name=$SelectedText$ --searchPath=/Users/samreid/github
working directory: /Users/samreid/github/circuit-construction-kit-dc

It is super fun, I'l give a demo at tomorrow's developer meeting.

[jonathanolson]

Can it check to see if it already has a require statement? Sounds nice.

[samreid]

Good idea, I added that in feb8ac2

Now you can try to import something that is already imported and it won't hurt anything.

[samreid]

@ariel-phet said it is OK to spend 1-2 hours to remove unused require statements, as long as CCK is out of my court.

[ariel-phet]

We should ideally tag open issues that relate to improvements, marking for dev meeting, so we can build up that list.

[samreid]

@ariel-phet I'd like to distinguish between the build process (chipper code that compiles the simulation) and the development process (in which the developer writes the code). This issue should be about the development process and providing tools to make that easier. I created a new issue #596 about improving the build process.

[samreid]

I'll track the require statements in #597, unassigning myself from this parent issue.

[zepumph]

Today @jessegreenberg and I explored how to get the grunt command insert-require-statement to work with the Sublime environment. I was able to get it to work successfully on my side, but it is possible that there will be cross platform problems. To make this I basically added a PhET Package to sublime that can be manually inserted into the Packages directory and then interfaced through the command Palette. The meat and bones is written in python, which is a bit of a bummer for our stack, but it's only 20 lines of code so I thought I'd go for it. I would some some feedback on the README and process of getting this set up. You still have to highlight the type you want imported, but it works just as well as in intellij.

This also leaves a lot of room to add many other commands to Sublime's command palette, very easily. I just started with this one though. @jonathanolson @jessegreenberg please try it out and tell me what you think!

[ariel-phet]

This issue is quite stale, improving our workflow/management seems like a much higher priority currently than improving tooling. I believe moving to modules also made a big difference in tool/IDE productivity. Closing