Eric (software)

eric
The logo of eric

Screenshot of eric4 running in KDE SC 4

eric4 running in KDE SC 4
Original author(s) Detlev Offenbach
Developer(s) Detlev Offenbach
Initial release 2002 (2002)
Stable release
6.1.10 / October 8, 2016 (2016-10-08)
Repository die-offenbachs.homelinux.org:48888/hg/eric
Development status active
Written in Python
Operating system Linux, Microsoft Windows, OS X
Platform Python, Qt, PyQt
Available in English, German, French, Russian, Czech, Spanish, Italian, Turkish, Chinese
Type Integrated Development Environment
License GPL "version 3 or later"
Alexa rank Increase 492,681 (July 2016)[1]
Website eric-ide.python-projects.org

eric is a free integrated development environment (IDE) used for computer programming.

eric is a full featured IDE, providing by default all necessary tools needed for the writing of code and for the professional management of a software project.[2][3]

eric is written in the programming language Python and its primary use is for developing software written in Python. Nevertheless, eric also supports many other programming languages, and the level of support of Ruby is almost as high as for Python.

eric is usable for development of any combination of Python 3 or Python 2, Qt 5 or Qt 4 and PyQt 5 or PyQt 4 projects, on Linux, Microsoft Windows and OS X platforms.

License, price and distribution

eric is licensed under the GNU General Public License "version 3 or later" and is thereby Free Software. This means in general terms that the source code of eric can be studied, changed and improved by anyone, that eric can be run for any purpose by anyone and that eric - and any changes or improvements that may have been made to it - can be redistributed by anyone to anyone as long as the license is not changed (copyleft).

The author distributes eric without charge; he provides an option for voluntary donations via PayPal on his homepage.

eric can be downloaded at Sourceforge and installed manually with a python installer script.[4] Most major GNU/Linux distributions include eric in their software repositories, so when using such GNU/Linux distributions eric can be obtained and installed automatically by using the package manager of the particular distribution.[5][6][7][8][9] Additionally, the author offers access to the source code via a public Mercurial repository.[10]

Characteristics

eric is written in Python and uses the PyQt Python bindings for the Qt GUI toolkit. By design, eric acts as a front end for several programs, for example the QScintilla editor widget, the python language interpreter, Rope for code refactoring and Python Profiler for code profiling.

The functionality of eric is extensible via a plug-in mechanism. The eric plug-in repository provides various kinds of extensions and is accessible from within the IDE.

Features

The key features of eric 6 are:[11]

Support for Python 2 and 3

Prior to the release of eric version 5.5.0, eric version 4 and eric version 5 coexisted and were maintained simultaneously, while eric 4 was the variant for writing software in Python version 2 and eric version 5 was the variant for writing software in Python version 3.

With the release of eric version 5.5.0 both variants had been merged into one, so that all versions as of eric version 5.5.0 support writing software in Python 2 as well as in Python 3, making the separate development lanes of eric version 4 and 5 obsolete. Those two separate development lanes are no longer maintained, the last versions prior merging them both to 5.5.0 where versions 4.5.25 and 5.4.7.[12]

Screenshot showing eric 3 on Arch Linux with Xfce 4.4
Eric 3 on Arch Linux with Xfce 4.4 
Screenshot showing eric 4
Eric 4 

Releases

Versioning scheme

eric uses a software versioning scheme with a three-sequence identifier, e.g. 5.0.1. The first sequence represents the major version number which is increased when there are significant jumps in functionality, the second sequence represents the minor number, which is incremented when only some features or significant fixes have been added, and the third sequence is the revision number, which is incremented when minor bugs are fixed or minor features have been added.

Release strategy

eric follows the development philosophy of Release early, release often, following loosely a time-based release schedule. Currently a revision version is released around the first weekend of every month, a minor version is released annually, in most cases approximately between December and February.

Version history

The following table shows the version history of eric, starting from version 4.0.0. Only major (e.g. 6.0.0) and minor (e.g. 6.1.0) releases are listed; revision releases (e.g. 6.0.1) are omitted.

Legend: Old version Older version, still supported Current stable version Latest preview version Future release
Branch Version Release date Major changes
4 Old version, no longer supported: 4.0.0 2007-06-03
Old version, no longer supported: 4.1.0 2008-02-03
Old version, no longer supported: 4.2.0 2008-08-09
  • Added a toolbar manager
Old version, no longer supported: 4.3.0 2009-02-08
  • Changed license to GPL "v3 or later"
Old version, no longer supported: 4.4.0 2010-01-09
  • Changed the help viewer to a full blown web browser (based on QtWebKit)[14]
Old version, no longer supported: 4.5.0 2012-02-04
  • Added MAC OS X to the officially supported platforms[15]
5 Old version, no longer supported: 5.0.0 2010-07-04
  • The eric 5 branch represents the new Python 3 variant of eric. It is not supporting Python 2 (yet). For Python 2 support the development of the eric 4 branch is continued.[14]
Old version, no longer supported: 5.1.0 2011-02-27
Old version, no longer supported: 5.2.0 2012-02-18
  • Added MAC OS X to the officially supported platforms[15]
Old version, no longer supported: 5.3.0 2013-02-03
  • Added support for Qt5[16]
Old version, no longer supported: 5.4.0 2014-01-07
  • Added support for PyQt5 projects[12]
Old version, no longer supported: 5.5.0 2014-10-27
  • Added Python 2 support to the eric 5 branch, so that from now on both, Python 3 and Python 2, are supported by one single version of eric, making the eric 4 branch for Python 2 obsolete, which is not further continued[12]
6 Old version, no longer supported: 6.0.0 2014-12-28
  • eric 6 replaces the eric 5.5.x line of development. It is usable with any combination of Python 2 or Python 3, Qt5 or Qt4 and PyQt5 or PyQt4, on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X platforms
Current stable version: 6.1.0 2015-12-05
  • Added multithreading support for checkers to make use of multiple CPUs/CPU-Cores[17]

Name

Several allusions are made to the British comedy group Monty Python, which the Python programming language is named after. Eric alludes to Eric Idle, a member of the group, and IDLE, the standard python IDE shipped with most distributions.

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Eric (software).

References

Further reading

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/2/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.