Visual NetRexx

This is the 'anchor page' for Visual NetRexx. All info about this tool, as it becomes available will be posted here. Please send all comments to this email address. Alternatively, post on the NetRexx mailing list, or Rexx newsgroup.

What is VisualNetRexx

VisualNetRexx is an Integrated Development Environment for IBM's NetRexx Language, which is a dialect of Rexx compiling to Java bytecode. Thus Java applets, applications and servlets may be written, using the familiar and human-oriented syntax of Rexx, in a graphically managed environment.

Alpha 3 requires Swing 1.0.2 and NetRexx 1.139 as well as a JDK 1.1.5 or higher compatible development kit installed.

Included in the alpha release are an editor, interface to the NetRexx compiler and project, category and package tree views for grouping of source code. Additional tools such as a Class Designer, GUI Layout tool, Debugger and Hierarchy Browser are in the wings.

VisualNetRexx speeds the development of applications written for Java, in NetRexx, by providing a comfortable framework and toolset for developers.

History

Alpha 1 went well with few major problems.

Feedback release (not really usable) was released on 1998-01-13.

We did this once before and ended up with a tool we didn't use to develop it - not a good sign in my mind. Lots of good work, though.

So for this release, something different:

I want feedback from as many people as possible, as early on as possible
I want to be able to use the product to develop itself
It is a client/server design (server can run locally)
It is really only a skeleton. I (we?) will be guided by users and some thinking. I'd like to do it fairly publicly - maybe even use the NetRexx mailing list for comments.
I want to make a programmers tool, not an idiots tool. For my money, VAJ is too close to the idiot end, and not close enough to the programmer end. This is not a slam on VA. It's a different take on design of tools.
I want to do regular builds.

Feel free to add your own wishes to this.

Documentation & Source

If you want to be involved in development, let me know via email and I'll send you a source drop. The documentation (HTML javadoc) is intended to give the developers something to read to understand the design/code so far. I want the documentation to be a useful and used thing.

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