Some questions about Developer Studio

[Shodan]

I was thinking of requesting a license of Dev Studio from my work. I had a few questions to see if i would actually get much out of it given the type of work i do.

1) Is it really geared for GUI interface progress development or is it also very useful for character based development? (My environment is purely character based).
2) Am i correct in that it would be helpful for designing frames / windows / buttons visually, and i could get it to take the visual designs and it would generate the character based code for me to drop into existing programs, saving me lots of time making forms/frames?
3) can i set the output for individual versions of progress from 10.x/11.x to current versions?

Thanks

 

[Rob Fitzpatrick]

I use PDSOE although I am certainly no expert in using and configuring it, and I probably use a fraction of what it can do.

1. My code is CHUI-only; you can certainly use PDSOE for that use case, and in my opinion it is miles better than the character or GUI Procedure Editors, though Eclipse is quirky and has its own idiosyncrasies. But it has lots of plugins available that extend its capabilities far beyond what the old editors can do, for example integration with git and other source management systems.
   
   Big picture: Progress has signaled that it may be moving away from PDSOE in the future, or at the very least supporting the use of third-party IDEs that support Language Server Protocol, e.g. VS Code. It is not clear, at least to me, when we will see the results of this work or what the licensing implications will be (e.g. trade in PDSOE licenses?). That shouldn't stop you from getting a PDSOE license. It's just something to be aware of.
   
   
2. My work is more in data access and business logic than in UI, so I don't know the answer to your second question. I believe the AppBuilder functionality is now integrated into PDSOE, but I think that's GUI-only. I'm not aware of any CHUI-compatible design tools.
   
   
3. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "output". You can have PDSOE build r-code for you, and that is configurable for DLC, PROPATH, etc. You can also run your code from PDSOE and the run and debug configurations are quite flexible. E.g.:
   
   

 

[Osborne]

For (2), as Rob outlines, the AppBuilder functionality is integrated into PDSOE and the good news is this allows you to create character based UI's using either of the TTY options:

 

[Rob Fitzpatrick]

Cool! I learned something new today.

 

[peterjudge]

1. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "output". You can have PDSOE build r-code for you, and that is configurable for DLC, PROPATH, etc. You can also run your code from PDSOE and the run and debug configurations are quite flexible. E.g.:
   
   View attachment 2962

One thing to note: PDSOE is a Windows-only product.

PDSOE detects which OE versions you have installed, and can present them to you as Rob showed, for a run or launch configuration. The compilation/syntax highlighting etc capabilities it presents in the editor is for the installed version only (ie if you run a 12.7 version, it will produce 12.7 r-code). You can build r-code for other versions but you will need to do that via a launch configuration or a project builder. In both cases I would recommend that you use PCT to do the compiles.

I agree 100% with Rob's reply #1. The editor gives you so many advantages over the procedure editor (TTY or GUI version) .

 

[Shodan]

Thats unfortunate. We are a linux shop. id have to have a license for both the PDSOE and a windows license of OE, which i don't think my company would be interested in paying for.

 

[peterjudge]

I think (but am most certainly not an expert on licenses) a developer studio license gives you everything you need for development on Windows. It comes with a bundled db, AppServer, etc .

ABL R-code is platform portable and there is an _progres executable shipped on Windows. If you use the $OPSYS preprocessor then you will need to compile on Linux, but I'm not sure that there are significant other differences. Using things like forward slashes as path delimiters, and case-sensitive file names, are things you will already be dealing with.

 

[Rob Fitzpatrick]

Another alternative for you is to use VS Code, which is cross-platform. Riverside Software makes an extension for it (called "OpenEdge ABL") that provides features like syntax highlighting, compilation, projects, debugging, etc. It's free.