Building Perl applications with Eclipse

Before you start

For many Perl programmers, a typical development environment might be an editor (such as Emacs), plus a command-line environment. The problem is that you must often switch between Emacs and the command line. If you are doing WEB development, this is even worse because you must switch between Emacs, the command line, and the Web browser when you write, execute, and check logs for information. Surprisingly, none of the Ides really meets the needs of PERL programmers over the years, and EPIC and Eclipse are just filling this void.

EPIC is a complete plug-in suite that supports a new "natural environment" in Eclipse. The EPIC plug-in combines the extensions with the editor to enable it to understand the PERL structure and layout. The plugin also adds additional code views and interfaces and related information that enables developers to view documents, execute PERL applications, and debug them.

About this tutorial

This tutorial discusses the basics of the epic plug-in and then uses a real example to study the epic system, which develops a small module and script that supports RSS analysis entirely in Eclipse. This opportunity can be used to study other areas, such as integration with Perldoc, code folding, and refactoring-all of which can make the application development process smoother. After completing this tutorial, you will have a good understanding of how to use the EPIC plug-in when developing a Perl application in Eclipse.

Prerequisite conditions

In order to use EPIC, you need the following tools:

Eclipse V3.0 or 3.1

Java V1.3, 1.4, or later

Perl V5.8.6 or later. Most UNIX® and linux® and Mac OS X contain a version of Perl. On Windows®, use ActivePerl.

The Padwalker Perl module on the CPAN.

EPIC (Eclipse Perl Integration), SourceForge the open source Perl IDE for the Eclipse platform.

Why should I use the IDE?

This section discusses the reasons for using the integrated development environment (integrated Development environment,ide) rather than a more traditional approach.

Tasks during development

Before you discuss the reasons for using the IDE instead of a more traditional approach, it is important to consider all the tasks that you might perform when developing in a scripting language. This is somewhat different from the typical compilation language development. There is generally no need to compile the source code into the final application, but there are some tasks that must be performed:

Write code-This includes adjusting the formatting to make your code more readable.

Check for validity--although the code is not compiled, the code still has a strict structure, and it is possible to introduce bugs and problems in your code, which can be identified by performing some simple checks on your code.

Accessing documents-no matter how well the programmer is, almost certainly needs to see some aspects of the document.

Write comments/Documents-add comments to your code to increase the readability of your code and add documentation to help others.

Executing code--you often need to try to run the code you are writing, especially when using scripting languages.

Debugging-typically requires a rigorous debugging process to detect any problems during execution.

How you perform these tasks depends on the environment you are using. Let's take a look at a typical non-IDE environment.