Visual Fortran Composer XE 2011 IntelliSense support

[psantos]

Hi to everyone!

I recently discovered the new Intel Visual Fortran Composer XE 2011 and I would like to know if this version has support to IntelliSense running under Visual Studio 2010. I searched the release notes but I wasn't able to find any reference to IntelliSense or similar capability. Thank you very much for any information.

Pedro

[Steven_L_Intel1 · Accepted solution]

No, it does not support IntelliSense. What aspects of that would you find useful for Fortran code?

[psantos]

Hello Steve. Thank you very much for your prompt answer. In the first place I'm particularly interested in this feature because I have worked a couple of months with GNAT Programming Studio (GPS) and this IDE has support for autocompletion and other useful things.
Among the many aspects of IntelliSense, I find very useful to have functions descriptions (or subroutines) and their parameters, without having to search the code for the function (or subroutine) body. It is also very useful when using derived data types, since the programer can have a list of all the components. It's very frustrating that the new Visual Fortran doesn't support this feature.

Pedro

[psantos]

Steve could you please tell me if Intel is planning to support IntelliSense or other autocompletion system in the near future? Thank you very much for your answer.

Pedro

[Steven_L_Intel1]

The near future? No. We have had the request, but many of the IntelliSense features don't seem applicable to Fortran, which is why I asked what you want it to do. Our IDE team is interested in such requests but keeps asking me for details.

[psantos]

It's sad to hear that Steve. However, do you think that the functionalities that I mentioned earlier are impossible to apply in Fortran? For example, all the routines with an explicit interface could have their argumments listed and perhaps a description of what it does. This doesn't seem (to me) impossible to apply to Fortran.

Pedro

[Steven_L_Intel1]

Ok, thanks. Most people talk about "brace matching" and auto-completion, which doesn't seem applicable to Fortran. Function descriptions and type components would probably need pulling information out of modules. I'll pass this along to the developers.

[jarvusluntatintel]

Auto-completion isn't applicable? Maybe I don't know what auto-completion means, but when I start to type in avariable, that is defined in the current subroutine, it sure would be nice to get a drop down list of the variables under it:

variable_foo%"drop down list here"

Or is not applicable mean not practical to add?

[Steven_L_Intel1]

I'd think that would get to be annoying - my personal opinion anyway - but I can see the value.

[Arjen_Markus]

Just a personal remark: I find it highly annoying myself. I have been working with C# these past couple of days and the VS editor is trying to be very helpful - up to the point that sometimes I have click outside the
text I am editing because otherwise the pop-ups and tooltips not only get in the way of the program text
but also prevent me from typing on.

This is my personal opinion though - other people seem to find it very useful and I find it useful myselfwhen
I explicitly ask for it ....

Regards,

Arjen

[psantos]

I think the autocompletion feature is very helpful. Of course it should only be displayed when hit ctr-space or other key combination, otherwise it could turn very annoying, like arjenmarkus said. However, arjenmarkus, I'm sure that you could have disabled all these automatic pop-ups and tooltips. So, I think that if this functionalities is available, everyone will be happy: the ones that doesn't like could just disabled it, and the ones that enjoy it could benefit from it.
I experienced the autocompletion features in ADA and now that I have returned to Fortran I'm missing some functionalities that I had became used to.

Pedro

[mikehinton]

I have to say I was very surprised (and disappointed) to see that IntelliSense features are not supported!

IntelliSensesupport wouldmake a significantly more efficient development environment for those that use it. Auto-completion of keywords and intrinsic (or library) functions/subroutines would be a good start, followed by auto-completion of local types and functions/subroutines, too.

Brace-matching and auto-outliningare also very useful features that I'm surprised are also not supported. How many times do you pick up ancient code and spend too much time trying to figure out the starts and stops of nested IF/THENs when they're all lined up on the left margin? ARGH!

I disagree with the comments about these features not being useful in FORTRAN. They are very useful in efficiently understanding old code and writing new code.

I agree that auto-completion is annoying at first - it annoyed me to no end when I started VB6/VBA programming>10 yrs ago- but once you're used to it, you're hooked. And VC#2010has taken it to an even higher level...

Mike.

PS: Scintilla Text Editor (SciTE) even does the brace-matching and auto-outlining. And that's freeware! And, for an example of what this stuff looks like in a FORTRAN IDE, just look at Lahey/Fujitsu LF95 v7.2...

[Kipling__Michael]

Steve,

The one intellisense feature that I would find most useful would be to right click on a subroutine call and have displayed the option to "Go to definition" which wouldopen thesubroutine document.

Thesame thing could be done with include files.

Mike

[Steven_L_Intel1]

Yes - we consider that part of Source Browser support, which in current VS versions is tied into IntelliSense.

[polarbear00]

I see that this is an old thread but I was searching for a solution and I came across this and I would like Intel to knowI too would like this functionality. I have looked at several compilers (Lahey, PGI, and Intel) that have utilized the Visual Studio IDE to build FORTRAN executables and they all fall short when it comes to implementingthese very valuableeditor features.

My Lahey ED4W from 1999 can auto complete key words, open up the source code when I right click on a subroutine name, and allows me to create a list of keywords that I can highlight in the color of my choice. The downside to this is the debugger crashes all the time and build tool is clunky and not very robust.

I would pay good money to have a Visual Studio FORTRAN implementation that could work just like the free NetbeansJava IDE. I don't even know where to begin to describe how nice it was to not have to continuously shuffle back and forth between source files to double check variable names and parameter lists requirements.

Intel, listen to your potential customers. The company that provides the best tools will win the customers.

On a positive note, great job implementing the Solution Explorer. It is easy to use when setting build options and the debugger is very robust and flexible. I look forward to playing with the build options to see how fast I can make the programs run.

Best regards to all,
Bob

[Kipling__Michael]

Steve,

Something that I do find helpful is hovering over a variable name and being told its type (int, character, etc.) in a popup. It would be useful right now as I am adding !DEC$ ATTRIBUTES REFERENCE for character call list variables in routines called by C.

Mike

[Steven_L_Intel1]

Thanks - I'll pass that on.

[rshulkosky]

Supporting the "go to definition" function and IntelliSense feature where one can immediately go from a referenceof a subroutine, function or variable to its' definition and location in code is invaluable in large projects, which I have. This would speed up programming significantly for me and of course auto-complete feature and other IntelliSense functionality would be useful. Is Intel ever going to support this functionalisy or something similar for the development community

[Steven_L_Intel1]

We agree. Stay tuned.

[martin_upsdellagrese]

Lahey Used Ed4Windows when both were 16 bit. For some reason Lahey didn't distribute the upgrade for Ed4Windows when it upgraded to 32bit. I use the upgrade Ed4Windows 4.30 and find it very useful in conjunction with the Intel compiler. It automatically makes a list of all subroutines and functions declared in tany of the files in the project. It means that it can give you a list of the parameters in the subroutine as you type. Just clicking on the name of a subroutine will swap to the definition of the subroutine.

It integrates well with visual studio. Both editors can be set to be aware that the file has been changed since you last used the editor and will refresh the screen as you swap between the two. You just need to be mindful to save the file in one before switching to the other. Ed4Windows can be set to atuomatically do this. see options>configuration>locking>On deactivate = save edited files and unlock.

[Steven_L_Intel1]

Intel Visual Fortran Composer XE 2011 Update 6 adds support for much of this when used with VS2010. You can get a list of all procedures, go to definition and find all references, get IntelliSense-like displays of tooltips for intrinsics with argument information, and much more.