IDE in nodejs electron - eine/hwd-ide GitHub Wiki

@flip111 You can still build a real IDE around javascript. The only sane way to do this is to latch onto already existing solutions, which are atom and vscode. I'm not a big fan of them because they are still slow.

I specified 'full client-side' trying to make it explicitly different from atom. That is, I mean a js app which is served by any general purpose file server and it is exclusively executed in the browser, no backend at all. For example, wavedrom when used as a library (I think that they later released some standalone version). Of course, this solution would be very limited and with very bad performance, because GHDL and pyVHDLParser won't be compatible, and the ANTLR parser would have to be exported to JavaScript.

As explained above, I find a proper backend (golang, C, C++, python, ruby...) compulsory, but I wouldn't introduce limitations that prevent someone from using nodejs.

@flip111 However it does work quite well and since there are big communities behind them it can only get better. The huge benefit here is that the javascript eco system makes it easy (compared to other solutions) to enhance these editors.

This makes atom so interesting as a prototyping environment. Visualization details (graph, trees, waves...) can be implemented as plugins and shown in the editor. Say a waveform viewer based on wavedrom as an embedded alternative to gtkwave. That would let us advance on what data we need to get from the parser(s) and enhance it/them if required. Then, it's up to contributors to replace atom with a different frontend.

@Nic30 browser/electron solution will be best (https://electronjs.org/ = offline version, server + chrome packed into executable)

I am ok with using electronjs as an alternative to browser + golang/flask. However, I'd like not to rely on it, in order to allow contributors to use golang, python, javascript...