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As unglamorous as it sometimes is, it’s undeniable that most of a developer’s time is spent inside an editor, writing code. Think about it: You'll use your coding tool for hours every day at work, and then at home for coding side projects. That can be 30 hours a week, if not more.
With this in mind, it’s really important to make that editor space as comfortable, helpful, and useful as possible. To get to that point, you really need a reliable, well-established Integrated Development Environment, rather than just a code editor with syntax highlighting and a few simple plugins.
IDEs are much more than just code editors. They provide a whole development toolset. From code debuggers, integrated version control — supporting the most popular software such as Git, SVN, Mercurial — to unit testing environments, where you can have a framework automatically set up. Bonus points go to any IDE that can really let you make yourself at home, by allowing you to customize the environment to conform to the way you work best.
While most powerful IDEs boast some or all of these features, they’re often restricted to a specific platform. You’ll typically need to buy a license for each operating system you choose to develop in. A costly proposition, but fortunately not one that applies to all IDEs.
Komodo IDE stands out by offering a single license that can be used across all platforms — Windows, OS X and Linux — to develop a wide variety of languages. You don’t need to waste money buying a separate license key for each one, and you don’t need to worry about compatibility or being forced to put up with the particular quirks of one platform. Komodo also offers plenty of customization and extensibility, as well as top-notch version control and debugging services.
In this article I’ll review Komodo IDE version 8, outline its features and advantages, and you’ll learn how this software can help you in writing better code and to be a more productive developer.
For the screenshots displayed below, I used Komodo’s “Abyss” skin after having customized Komodo to my liking.
How Komodo IDE can help you
Komodo IDE is a cross-platform IDE that supports most of the major programming languages in use today, such as PHP, Ruby, Node.js, and Python. The IDE also crosses the boundary into front-end, with support for HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
Its “cross-platform” nature means you can run the software on all major operating systems, OS X, Windows and Linux. This is nice if you work in a team and team members use different operating systems.
These cross-platform capabilities stem from Komodo’s implementation of the Mozilla engine, the same framework that powers equally-cross-platform browser Firefox.
More and more companies are making their software free for the open-source world and for educational institutions and ActiveState, the team behind Komodo IDE, is no different, with a range of licensing options available for individuals/freelancers, companies, and open source projects. Head over to the website and download a free trial.
ActiveState, the company behind Komodo IDE, also offers a free and open-source version of the software, cutting out all the advanced features, leaving you with a powerful, stripped-back code editor.
Key features of Komodo IDE
Komodo IDE has a balanced selection of features, with everything you’d expect from an IDE while avoiding becoming a software behemoth.
Besides the editor, the IDE has a debugger, a "toolbox" version control system integration, team collaboration, and powerful code intelligence with autocomplete and intelligent code refactoring.
Debugger
Komodo has a powerful debugging engine with all the features you’d expect, such as viewing the call stack, breakpoints, remote debugging, and an interactive shell.
To start the debugger go to Debug -> Go/Continue or Debug -> Step In. By default the Debug Options window will appear, where you can configure the debugger environment, like select the programming language, set up environment variables or insert additional arguments.
Currently Komodo supports Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby, XSLT and Tcl programming languages. It will automatically detect the programming language by the currently opened file’s extension.
Toolbox
The Toolbox is a very useful feature of Komodo, allowing you to store code snippets, JavaScript macros, templates or even URLs in a sidebar for quick access. This opens up all sorts of automation possibilities, allowing you to create code snippets that auto-abbreviate, for example.
To open the toolbox go to View -> Tabs & Sidebars -> Toolbox. You can categorize your “tools” into three sections: the top level is the global toolbox and two additional toolboxes, the shared and project toolbox.
The top level toolbox can be applied to any file you’re working on, the shared toolbox are tools that can be shared with your team members or available in other Komodo installations, and finally the project toolbox contains tools specific and visible to the currently active project.
Code intelligence
Code intelligence (or “code completion”) is a must-have feature for every major IDE. Komodo is no exception, and it has a very powerful engine for this feature.
Code intelligence in Komodo IDE isn’t limited to completing your method and property names, it also has code refactoring capabilities and smart code transformations like variable renaming and method extraction.
The code browser and go-to definitions are also part of the IDE’s code intelligence. The code browser lets you navigate the source in a tree view, and clicking on one of the methods or properties will jump to that line in the file. It’s very convenient.
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