Hello everyone,

Lately I've restarted development of AIDEa, an experimental IDE written in Free Pascal and Lazarus, and I've made substantial changes to both its architecture and implementation.
The project has reached the point where I think it would benefit from feedback from other developers before I continue much further.

The current build is an experimental preview. Many features are still incomplete, some parts of the interface and runtime services are under active development, and there are still numerous limitations, regressions and rough edges.

At this stage, I would appreciate constructive feedback from anyone interested in reviewing the current implementation, experimenting with the available features, and sharing their thoughts on what works well, what doesn't, and where the project could be improved.
Some of the areas currently implemented or partially implemented include:

• workspace, solution and project management;
• source editor;
• visual form designer;
• object, property and event inspection;
• project templates;
• compiler integration;
• themes and localization;
• integrated documentation.

Development is currently focused on Linux. Although AROS support remains one of the long-term goals of the project, the AROS version is not yet in a usable state, so the first preview will be Linux only.

If there is enough interest, I'll upload the current preview together with its documentation. I'd be grateful for bug reports, suggestions, comments on the overall architecture, and general impressions of the project.

I'd be interested to know whether anyone would like to take a look and follow the project's development.

thank you!

I've uploaded the current Linux Developer Preview to SourceForge for anyone interested in having a look.

The package includes:

* the current Linux build;
* screenshots;
* the Developer Manual;

Please bear in mind that this is still an experimental preview with incomplete functionality, known limitations and bugs. The goal at this stage is to gather feedback on the architecture, workflow and current implementation rather than to provide a production-ready IDE.

Download: https://sourcefor...t/download

Project page: https://sourcefor...cts/aidea/

Constructive feedback, bug reports and suggestions are very welcome.

AIDEa reaches self-hosting for Release 1

Until now, I have not publicly shared much information about this project. Most of the work has taken place quietly while the architecture matured and the core components were implemented. Now that AIDEa has reached an important milestone, I thought it was a good time to introduce it.

AIDEa is **not a Pascal IDE**.

It is a service-oriented Integrated Development Environment platform designed to support multiple programming languages and multiple operating systems through a common runtime architecture.

Although AIDEa is implemented in Free Pascal, the choice of implementation language does not define the scope of the platform. Free Pascal was selected because of its mature cross-platform compiler and the wide range of operating systems it supports.

The platform is intended to support any programming language for which an Engineering Service Package can be provided. An Engineering Service Package supplies the language-specific grammar, object model, compiler integration, templates, documentation, coding conventions, and other engineering knowledge required by the runtime.

The first Engineering Service Package currently under development targets Free Pascal. This makes Pascal the first supported language, but it is intended as the first implementation of the architecture rather than its final destination.

I'm pleased to report that AIDEa has now reached another significant milestone for Release 1: it is fully self-hosting.

The IDE now successfully builds and runs itself on both Linux and Windows. In practical terms, AIDEa can now be used to develop new versions of AIDEa itself, demonstrating that the runtime architecture and its core services have matured sufficiently for everyday development.

The AROS port continues to be developed in parallel. At present there are still platform-specific user interface and stability issues that prevent it from being considered production-ready, but these are implementation issues rather than architectural limitations.

Reaching self-hosting is an important validation of the design and brings the project one step closer to its long-term objective of providing a language-independent, cross-platform development environment.

Questions, comments, and constructive feedback are always welcome.

Grazie!

You're very welcome. I feel I have a debt to the Amiga that I'd like to repay. When I was a struggling student with little idea of what I wanted to do with my life, the Amiga gave me the passion and motivation to pursue a career in IT. This project is my own small way of giving something back and contributing to the Amiga's legacy.

On a related note, I tried to get in touch with Alb42 by emailing the address published on his website, but unfortunately I never received a reply. If anyone in the community knows him personally, perhaps you could ask whether he'd be interested in getting in touch. I'd still like to use the latest Lazarus LCL-MUI toolchain to help move the project forward on AROS, and I'd really appreciate the opportunity to collaborate or at least get some guidance.

Albs has a Discord channel

Thank you, I really appreciate that. Do you happen to know the name of the Discord channel, or have an invite link? I'd be happy to get in touch with him there.

I don't remember

maybe someone here on the forum remembers the channel and can chime in

Try this:

http://discord.amitu.be/

Thank you, appreciated!

A new AIDEa Developer Preview has now been uploaded to SourceForge.

This preview represents a significant milestone for the project. AIDEa is now self-hosting, meaning it is capable of building itself from within the IDE.
The current preview delivers near Release 1 capabilities, including:

• Self-hosting development
• Git integration
• Visual form-based GUI development
• Free Pascal (FPC) language support
• Lazarus LCL project support
• Project, workspace and solution management
• Multi-document source editing
• Compiler integration
• Object, property and event inspection
• Diagnostics and navigation
• Project and form templates
• Configurable themes, resources and language packages

Although I didn't have time to update the Developer's Guide before leaving, the IDE itself should run correctly once a suitable compiler has been configured.

If AIDEa does not automatically detect your Free Pascal compiler, open the Configuration dialog and either:

• manually select the compiler executable, or
• use the compiler search function.

When using the search function, choose a sufficiently broad search path and an appropriate search depth. A depth of 15–20 levels is generally adequate for most installations.
Please keep in mind that AIDEa is not intended to be a conventional IDE. The goal of the project is to explore a new architecture for software development based on reusable engineering services and declarative Engineering Service Packages. Rather than embedding knowledge of languages, compilers, templates and development workflows directly into the application, AIDEa externalizes that knowledge into structured packages consumed by a common runtime.

This preview is being shared primarily for developers interested in evaluating the architecture and providing feedback as Release 1 approaches.
I'll unfortunately be travelling tomorrow and expect to be away for about a week, with limited development time for a further two to three weeks afterwards. I may therefore be slower than usual in responding to questions or feedback, but I wanted to make this latest self-hosting build available before leaving.

As always, comments, bug reports and suggestions are very welcome. I hope you find the project interesting.