Is Wolfram Workbench going to be updated to work well with Mathematica 10 and the new syntaxes and operators introduced (<| ... |>, @* and /*)?
Workbench has not been updated in a while, so Iām interested, too. If I understand how workbench works, all the syntax parsing, etc. is handled by Mathematica, and Workbench is just a shell to manage files and add functionality. I havenāt tested it yet, but the new syntax in Mathematica 10 should ājust workā. Iād like to see WorkBench ājust workā better.
Opening and debugging notebooks does not seem to work anymore with Mathematica 10 on OS X 10.9. When I try to open a notebook from Workbench, the notebook opens in Mathematica, but after a short while, Workbench displays a āMathematica Notebook Launchā error. When I try to debug, I get the same error and the Workbench console shows āStart Debug Session\nTerminatedā. In Mathematica, I can not get the packages from my Workbench project, because the $Path variable does not include the project path. When I switch back to my Mathematica 9 installation using the Workbench preferences, everything works as expected.
I get the same problem with my installation, also OS X 10.9. I also saw that I had not used Workbench in a couple years. As an IDE, it needs a bit of work. At last yearās WTC, I heard about a minor update to Workbench, but it may have only been an internal build.
For 99% of users, Workbench is unnecessary. However, for building large apps, it is really useful. Letās hope that there is a fix for the current problem, and a better solution for developing large packages (etc.) in the near future.
Bernd and George,
You are not the first people to encounter a problem launching Mathematica 10
from recent Wolfram Workbench.
It seems to be erratic as to which computers and which projects.
Requests; please send this information to support@wolfram.com:
-
Under the Wolfram Workbench menu, About Wolfram Workbench item,
the window shows a version number. Please send that. Also send
the āBuildā number if one is shown. -
Try changing the path to Mathematica in the Workbench preferences
from Default to the explicit full path. Do this even if the default value
shown is correct. This is known to have helped in one case. Include
in your email whether this helped. -
The actual text of the error message, if any, and the symptoms.
-
And of course, please include the Mathematica license number or
Activation Key and the operating system level.
Thank you.
OK. I sent the information, along with a notebook with SystemInformation[].
I made a toy project in Workbench āfreshā, so there should be no issue with legacy issues.
My notebook got so large that I had to refactor the code and use workbench. My problem is a bit different and I have already opened a support case - #1211976. I am going to have to go back to v9 since there doesnāt seem to be much movement on getting Workbench working again and I have changes I need to make to my notebook.
Does anyone else have the problem where the line numbers donāt change when you scroll in Workbench?
There are alternatives to Workbench. The simplest one is a plain text editor such as Vim or Sublime Text. Both of these provide syntax highlighting, so they make it easier to work with package files (which are plain text files).
And thereās the actively developed Mathematica plugin for IntelliJ IDEA: http://wlplugin.halirutan.de/ It provides excellent syntax highlighting (better than any text editor would be capable of since this tool can actually parse Mathematica code), a structure view for easy navigation, templates, auto-completion, documentation tooltips, and other advanced editing features.
What it does not provide at the moment is: built-in debugger, profiler or unit tests.
Szaboics-
Thanks for your information - I downloaded IntelliJ and the plugin and got it up and going. It took me a bit to get the hang of Workbench so that when I clicked āRunā it picked up all the various packages I had created and then launched the front end.
Can you point me to instructions on how to do the same thing with IntelliJ? Iāve imported my project into IntelliJ but canāt figure out how to get it to launch Mathematica from the IntelliJ UI.
Thanks again!
Tim
Hi Tim,
unfortunately this is not implemented yet. To make the Run button work, I have to implement a stable way of opening and managing a Mathematica connection from within IDEA for all 3 big operation systems. While this looks like it can be done in reasonable time, it will definitely require a thoughtful plan from the start, because I want to use this later for Unit Tests too.
Currently, Iām working (and Iām almost finished) on making a polished version of a Structure View, I have finished and Iām now testing Live Templates, Surround With and, very new, an Automatic Bugreporter and I started the framework for Code Inspections.
Although the Run button does not work, you can still test your packages easily. The full path of your package folder can be brought into Mathematica by dragging it from the IDEA project view into the notebook. Then, you add this to the $Path variable with
AppendTo[$Path, "/your/project/folder"]
and after this you can load your packages as usual using << or Get.
Finally, the version of the IDEA plugin which is downloaded automatically is not the latest hot stuff. If you want to test the dev version, just uninstall your current Mathematica plugin, download the plugin from the development branch here
https://github.com/halirutan/Mathematica-IntelliJ-Plugin/raw/develop/Mathematica-IntelliJ-Plugin.zip
and install it by going in IDEA to Settings ā Plugins ā Install from Disk.
Finally (really the last finally) I would appreciate if you read the Documentation here, try and test everything carefully and report issues back.
If you have specific questions, for instance how to use the latest features which are not in the documentation yet, donāt hesitate to ping me in the stackexchange chat.
Cheers,
Patrick
(halirutan)
I have just installed WorkBench 2 and was having a play and have the same issues with support for v10 syntax etc. I have packages full of associations which it doesnāt like, but will run in MMA 10.0.1 and 10.0.2
The good news is the packages were developed by a WRI consultant who was actively using a beta of the next version of Workbench - so at least we know its under developmentā¦
This is the error Iām getting from Workbench 2.0, Mathematica 10.0.2, 64 bit Windows 8.1
when I try to run a test package:
An internal error occurred during: āLaunching testā.
com.wolfram.jlink.NativeLink.MLOpenString(Ljava/lang/String;[Ljava/lang/String;)
Is this problem other people have been having? Has anyone figured out a simple work-around?
I get the same problem with my Trial Key, Mathematica 10.0.1.0 and Workbench 2.0 build 126 downloaded from Mathematica User Portal.
Wlplugin seems to be a good alternative, but I need a debugger so Iām stuck !!!
Whatās Wlplugin? Itās really irritating that the problems of Workbench 2.0 with Mathematica 10 have not been addressed. I waste a lot of time having to close and restart Mathematica ever time I want to test out a change in a package.
Wlplugin is a Mathematica-plugin for IntelliJ IDEA.
It works fine , I hope that the debugger will be implemented soon.
Iām willing to pay for help to the programmer in order to speed development !
Here is my desktop screenshot on IntelliJ IDEA working on a math-package + Math REPL running
@Frank - In spite of the lack of comms I know WRI are working on this - as mentioned I have seen a beta of WB3 running on a WRI consultants laptop.
Agree it would be helpful to get a release date from them.
What are the developers at Wolfram Research using?
Extrapolating from the 1 example noted above I have seen - the WB3 beta.
Since the WL-Plugin was again mentioned several times, let me take the opportunity to say a few words.
The WL-Plugin is the Mathematica Plugin for IntelliJ IDEA and you can find the first announcement on stackexchange here, the initial post in the community here , a detailed description of new features here and the source-code here. As already pointed out the WL-Plugin does indeed support all of the syntax additions that were introduced with the release of Mathematica version 10.0. Prominent examples are the Association brackets <|Ā
|> or for instance RightComposition operator /*.
If you are new to the WL-Plugin or even if you have used it for a while, I strongly encourage you to read the article How to use IDEA effectively with Mathematica code that I published some weeks ago. I know that all the features of IDEA can be a bit overwhelming at first, especially for users that just want to start right away, but the IDE is so powerful that you should invest a small amount of time to get to know the most important things.
Last night I added autocompletion and the documentation-lookup for all new built-in functions in version 10. Furthermore, I added the new file-extensions *.wl and *.wlt so that they are recognised by the WL-Plugin. Together with some minor bug-fixes this will be released in the next week and everyone should get the update-notice automatically through IDEA.
Furthermore, let me respond to this
I hope that the debugger will be implemented soon
I know that there are 4 major things missing in the WL-Plugin: Debugging, Profiling, Documentation-Building and Unit-Testing. What you have to understand is that e.g. the Documentation-Building functionality is part of the WB and not openly accessible through Mathematica. I cannot just use what the WB provides and publish it in an open-source project. A few users might have noticed that the documentation files that come with the WL-Plugin have a different license. I am very grateful that WRI allowed me to use this information but as well as everything that comes with WB, this is property of WRI and I cannot simply copy it into the plugin by re-engineering.
Debugging and Profiling are probably a bit different because this functionality is available in Mathematica too and what I would have to do is to implement a working interface for it: Setting breakpoints in IDEA, controlling execution, etc.. One big hindrance here is that I rarely (in other words never) use these features myself and IĀm not very much experienced with it. Therefore, it would need some time so that I can look at these things.
Unit-Testing is now, in version 10, available in Mathematica too, where in former times it was hidden in WB as secret package and was loaded on demand. Now, it is theoretically easily possible to support this in the WL-Plugin.
Iām willing to pay for help to the programmer in order to speed development!
Currently, the limiting factor is time. IĀm doing this completely in my free-time and the WL-Plugin is only one of my hobbies. What is interesting and important to me is: how large is the user-base of the WL-Plugin? As you can surely imagine, it makes a difference whether your software is used by 3 or by 300 people, especially when you have to decide what you do with your time.
So what you as users can do is
- Subscribe to the mailing list so that I (and only I) can see how many active users we have. Additionally, I have a way to keep you informed.
- Report bugs or make feature requests in the issue tracker. Look for instance at this issue. I doesnĀt always has to be a strict bug-report. Here I see how people are using the plugin an what they want.
- Tell your friends and colleagues about the WL-Plugin! Just spread it to all people you think could be interested.
- Make sure that I know about things the happen around the plugin. For instance, I only saw this question because someone else pointed me to it.
If you need to get in touch with, now you know who this ĀprogrammerĀ is. It is this guy in the Wolfram Community and this guy at stack exchange.
Mathematica 10 has many nice new features: the Geometry routines, Associations, not to speak of Tensor routines from Mathematica 9, which I have just begun to explore. Then there is cloud computing, which I donāt seem to have access to without major additional expense even though I have Premier Service.
But one major feature that has been taken away is the ability to write documentation with Workbench. There is no Workbench 3 for developers and not even a beta testing program. This is seriously unfair to users. A Workbench for documentation was a major feature of the extra cost of Premier Service and now it has been taken away.
It is my belief that a much larger group of Mathematica users would benefit from an Application and Documentation approach then presently do. Itās great for study and research projects. Once you set it up, itās easy to add documentation pages. The Application approach helps to develop and preserve larger bodies of work.
I would like to suggest that WRI restore a functioning Workbench for documentation with Mathematica 10.