So, now let's look in a little more detail to what is an IDE. An IDE is a
software application that supports software developers in many of
their everyday tasks. It has many useful features. Most IDEs
provide views that can be used to navigate, project
resources from different perspectives. For example, you might want to
look at your code differently when you're writing code,
and when you're debugging. They also normally provide an intelligent
source code editor. For example, an editor that will allow you
to browse the documentation when you're writing a code that
uses a specific method, or that will give you autocompletion when
you start writing the name of an object and you want to
get the methods for that object. And all of these things
can be very useful while you're developing and can save you a
lot of time. Modern IDE's will also normally give you support for
version control systems that then you
can use for softer configuration management.
And we're going to discuss in detail version control systems in
the next tools of the trade lesson, and we're also
going to see how it can be integrated within an IDE.
IDEs also give you builders so they give you build automation
tools, they give you runtime support. So that you can
run your projects from within the IDE and, for example,
observe some aspects of the execution. In addition to giving
you support for the runtime, they give you support for testing.
Many IDEs allow you to run tests from within
the IDE and to check the results of the tests
from within the IDE. Not only that. Normally, after you
run your tests, if there are some test cases that
fail, you can also use your IDEs to do debugging.
Many IDEs include graphical debuggers. Debuggers will allow you to
navigate through the code, set which points, stop and restart
the execution. Inspect variables, and do all of the activities
that help debugging. And, to help you be more efficient
and more effective when you do debugging. And into addition to
all these features that are listed here IDEs can normally provide
you even more features through a mechanishm that is called plugins.