Gavin, Sjur and Tomáš have been hard at work all summer to deliver a much-improved version of the Ceylon IDE. This release support exactly the same language constructs and features the same JVM backend compiler as the M3.1 release, so it's 100% compatible with it. But while the backend is the same, the UI is much improved, as you can see from the following change log and screen shots.

No more dependence on IMP

We recommend removing IMP from your Eclipse installation.

Ceylon Explorer view

The Ceylon Explorer View presents packages as children of the containing modules. You should reset your Ceylon Perspective after updating the IDE on order to get the Ceylon Explorer in place of JDT's Package Explorer.

Awesome documentation hover

Hover over the name of a Ceylon or Java declaration to see the gorgeous new hover info. Click in it to browse to other related declarations.

Code popup

Ctrl-P, or "Show Code" pops up an information control containing the code of the referenced declaration. Ctrl-P again opens an editor. Hyperlink navigation from the Code popup is also possible.

Hierarchy and Outline popups

As before, Ctrl-T and Ctrl-O open the popup Hierarchy and Outline views. These now look a lot prettier, and they are also more functional. You can filter the contents by typing inside them, and they remember their bounds. The Hierarchy View is also much better integrated with Java stuff. Ctrl-T inside the open Hierarchy View cycles between Hierarchy View, Supertypes View, and Subtypes View. These popups have configurable background colors.

Auto-addition of needed imports

Refactorings, quick fixes, and autocompletions now add any needed imports to the top of the source file. In addition, autocompletion will propose declarations from any imported module, even if the package is not imported in the current unit.

New Quick Fixes/Assists

Thanks to Sjur and Tomáš, we now have some new quick fixes and assists:

• convert if/else to then/else, then/else to if/else
• invert if/else
• add type constraint to type parameter

Clean Imports

Clean Imports now automatically fills in missing imports if unambiguous, and prompts the user to choose a declaration to import if ambiguous.

Terminate Statement

Ctrl-2 adds any necessary semicolon, closing parens, and closing braces to terminate the statement at the current line. This feature is almost magical in how good it is at guessing where the closing punctuation needs to go.

Mark occurrences

Occurrence marking is now enabled by default and works like JDT (the declaration to highlight is the one under the caret).

Proposals popups

Completions proposals and quick fix/assist proposal popups now have syntax highlighting. Typing a "." automatically activates the completion proposal window. When only one completion proposal is available, it is automatically applied.

Select Enclosing/Restore Previous Selection

Ctrl-shift-up expands the selection to the containing expression or program element. Ctrl-shift-down takes you back to the previous selection.

Also Ctrl-Shift-P takes you to the matching bracket and Show In now works.

Outline View

There is now a popup context menu on Outline View nodes. The selected node now follows the editor caret location.

Tomáš added a toolbar to the Outline View, letting you filter out local declarations and expand/collapse all nodes.

Open Ceylon Declaration / Open Type

The default keyboard binding for Open Ceylon Declaration is now Ctrl-Shift-O instead of Ctrl-Shift-C. This is more ergonomic and works even inside the Java editor. Inside the Ceylon perspective, Ctrl-Shift-T opens the Open Type dialog, which lets you choose between Ceylon and Java types in one dialog (a very slow-to-load dialog, but hey...).

F3 (Open Selected Declaration) now handles Java declarations.

Support for multiple module repositories

The New Project wizard and Ceylon Preferences page now let you configure multiple module repositories for a project.

Backend errors

Errors from the compiler backend now show up in the Problems View and vertical ruler, and compiler progress is visible in the Progress View and status bar. The 80s-style scrolling console is gone.

Progress

Building the completion proposals and hierarchy for the first time is now expensive because it involves trawling the whole JDK. You get a nice progress bar in the status bar of the main window.

Parser lifecycle

Code is lexed/parsed synchronously on every keypress, and lexed/parsed+typechecked synchronously on every keypress when the completions proposals window is open. This results in much more responsive syntax highlighting and fixes some wierd behavior in the completion proposals window. When the completions proposal window is not open, typechecking still happens in a background job as before.

Download it today

The Ceylon IDE is available today from our update site or from Eclipse Marketplace:

Ceylon IDE

Eclipse Indigo

drag and drop into a running Eclipse workspace

After installing, go to Help > Welcome to Ceylon to get started.