Sublime Text

[jedy]

I've recently stumbled on Sublime Text and I'm purely amazed!

This thing is faster than Mono Develop and way more comfortable. It has some couple of awesome features, but that's not the main point.

I've seen a couple of Unity developers interested in this ( mainly Jacob Pennock ) and a couple of plugins already created and ready to use. It's pretty close to being a full featured IDE, but it still needs some work to be able to fully support the whole process. ( It can't build, projects for instance )

I'm currently working on a build system working with Visual Studios "devenv", which works but it's far away from convenient.

Anyway - Is anyone else interested in the whole Sublime Text Unity development?

[karl_]

Heck yeah! I've been using it as my primary IDE for about a month now.

[jedy]

I'm getting the hang of python and in my spare time I'll try getting it a bit suited for bigger projects.

I gotta finish some sort of useful build system ( for now it's just some static vars ) and "Go To Definition" functionality.

Any ideas what else could improve the workflow ?

[Izitmee]

But... it's not free and there is no files panel, no class inspector panel, no refactoring, no... :P Though it actually looks nice, thanks for sharing But from a developer's point of view, could you list the pros/cons VS MonoDevelop (apart the fastness - which is understandable, since there appear to be so fewer features), if you have the time.

[yuriythebest]

Hi! I've tried it, however it only seems to open a single file at a time, no "solution/project" as a whole- so it doesn't do refactoring/renaming/etc but overall looks nice!

[jedy]

Well actually :
It's not free, yes - it's on an unlimited trial. ( It pops up a message every 50 or so saves though )
There is a files panel which isn't the best, but with an additional plugin - it's just as useful as the MonoDevelops file panel.
Their alternative to class panel is amazing and has a lot of cool options besides jumping to different methods ( jumping to lines, files and basically everything )
The string search/replace tool works with regular expressions and is pretty powerful by itself - it still lacks some refactoring features though.

There are actually 2 giant pros over most of the IDEs I've seen - extensibility and ease of use.
It has a strong plugin system, that with a Must Have package called Package Control makes installing plugins a breeze - it handles syncing with the repository downloading and initial configuration of all packages, while you only have to pick an item from a dropdown. Adding new functionality is pretty simple too, and pretty much could fill in for most of the minor gaps ( custom hotkeys ).
The already created plugins library is pretty broad too, so most of the tedious things are already created for you.

The other thing is that everything basically is available through 2 menus, accessible from hotkeys. You could basically download packages, use packages, change the syntax highlighting, theme, jump to files, functions etc without you hands actually leaving the keyboard and with no tedious submenu navigation.

Oh yeah - it's portable. Not really something important for my laptop, but some people will love this.

There are cons though - at it's current state it will require some work to actually replace MonoDevelop.

It can't rename both a class and it's file - you have to manually do that.

There is no debug system connected with Unity ( and at complex projects - this may be vital )

There is no build system.

There is no "Jump To Definition"

I'm working on the last two because I can't have a main IDE without those two. The renaming is something I can live with - I don't do this all the time and for debug sessions I will still use MonoDevelop.

PS : It doesn't work with .NET projects, they have their own project files which I'm trying to customize for C# and Unity.

[Izitmee]

Wow, ok, you sold me. I won't try it with Unity, but will definitely download it and check it out for other uses as soon as I have the time. Thanks a lot for taking the time to make such a detailed description

[jedy]

Okay, finally got "Go To Definition" and Build up and running!
The "Go To Definition" configuration is retarded, but I'm working on that.

[taumel]

Kickass editor, one of the best pieces of software i've encountered not only for this year.

[DallonF]

Hi! I've tried it, however it only seems to open a single file at a time, no "solution/project" as a whole- so it doesn't do refactoring/renaming/etc but overall looks nice!

Nope, it can definitely open a files sidebar. Go to File > Open Folder, Project > Add Folder to Project, or View > Side Bar > Show Open Files. I've been using it pretty extensively for web development and I like it, but I'm not sure it's best for a compiled language.

[Izitmee]

Got it! Currently using it only for quick CSS editing, but already loving it

[dogzerx2]

I like the minimap!

[jedy]

Didn't have time to do much on the subject, but I wanna try to hack into Visual Studio or Mono to do my autocompletion - the only thing that actually stops me from using this as my main IDE atm.

[Izitmee]

Hey, I'm having issues with shortcuts. The "SHIFT+/" comment toggle doesn't work when pressing "/" on the numeric keypad. Did you find how to bind a keypad key?

[jedy]

Dunno about that, it should be possible though - check the forums on their website maybe ?

[rstehwien]

I recently found and fell in love with sublime... its command pallet and file switching remind me of emacs. There is a code completion tool for c# that I'm trying to get to work for me (probably just need to give the right paths to assemblies):
https://github.com/quarnster/CompleteSharp

Make sure you get Package Control (http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/package_control) then install all of Jacob's Unity tools. Check out these posts:
http://www.jacobpennock.com/Blog/?p=647
http://www.jacobpennock.com/Blog/?p=568

If I could just get code completion done, I'd be able to use Sublime. Would miss refactoring... but I'm pretty sure that renaming refactors could just be done with one of the smart replacements in Sublime.

[jedy]

I recently found and fell in love with sublime... its command pallet and file switching remind me of emacs. There is a code completion tool for c# that I'm trying to get to work for me (probably just need to give the right paths to assemblies):
https://github.com/quarnster/CompleteSharp

Make sure you get Package Control (http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/package_control) then install all of Jacob's Unity tools. Check out these posts:
http://www.jacobpennock.com/Blog/?p=647
http://www.jacobpennock.com/Blog/?p=568

If I could just get code completion done, I'd be able to use Sublime. Would miss refactoring... but I'm pretty sure that renaming refactors could just be done with one of the smart replacements in Sublime.

Yeah Jacob almost got it going with Sublime. I'm not too happy with the results but work is knocking at the door and I'm out of spare time to invest into making it suitable for my needs

Still I'm using it for web stuff and it's pretty awesome. I wonder how fat would it go after the beta finishes

[Izitmee]

I'm liking Sublime Text more and more, and now I'll definitely try to use it with C# and Unity too. Only con, as of now: it's a pain in the ass with non US keyboards (or at least with Italian ones). The quotation marks key can't be used for bindings, nor the numeric keypad "/" - and probably more, but these are the ones I found :P

[jedy]

"/".encode('string-escape')

This could work.

[Izitmee]

Ouch, sorry jedybg, I meant that "/" doesn't work from the numeric keypad (I checked the forums, and it seems there's no straight solution). Anyway, that's definitely not a big problem - and again, thanks for letting me know this awesome editor