Wing IDE 5.0 beta5

Cranes

Wing IDE 5.0 beta5 is now available for all product levels (Wing IDE Pro, Wing IDE Personal, and Wing IDE 101).

What's New in Wing IDE 5

The feature highlights of Wing IDE Pro version 5 are:

  • Redesigned GUI -- Wing IDE now runs on Qt via PySide (earlier versions used PyGTK instead). As a result, Wing is native on OS X and many quirks in Wing 4 have been fixed by this change. Editors and tools can be dragged and dropped to other splits, to a new split, or to new windows. The toolbar and context menus in the editor and Project tool are now configurable. Preferences and some menus have been reorganized for clarity.
  • New Editor Split Mode -- Wing now supports opening different sets of files in each editor split. This mode is disabled by default but can be enabled by unchecking Show All Files in All Splits in the editor split options drop down (top right of editor).
  • Sharable Color Palettes -- Color palettes for the GUI as a whole and for syntax highlighting individual file types can be defined and shared. This is documented in the Customization chapter of the manual.
  • Auto-Editing -- Auto-editing is enabled by default, except for operations that may be jarring to new users. Be sure to try also the operations that are off by default: auto-entering of spaces, PEP8 spacing, and block management with repeated presses of the colon key. These can be configured from the Edit > Keyboard Personality menu.
  • Named File Sets -- Sets of files found by searching, or selected in the user interface can be named and visited from the File menu and Open Files tool, or used for searching in Search in Files.
  • Sharable Launch Configurations -- Launch configurations that define the environment for a sub-process can be defined in the Project menu and used for debugging, unit testing, or in the OS Commands tool.
  • Named Entry Points -- Named entry points can be defined in the Debug menu to make it easier to debug or execute code with different arguments or environment.
  • Unit Test Environment -- The environment for unit tests can now be configured independently from debug environment in the Testing tab of Project Properties and File Properties.
  • Lockable Editor Splits -- Clicking on the stick pin icon will lock an editor split so it is not reused for opening other files unless there are no unlocked editor splits. A second click changes the editor to non-sticky (auto-closing) and a third click returns it to sticky mode.
  • Startup Preferences Dialog -- For new installations where no Wing 4.x preferences are converted, Wing displays a dialog for selecting the most commonly altered preferences (keyboard personality, tab key action, and whether to enable auto-editing)
  • Minor Features -- There are also some new minor features in Wing 5, such as a preference to control whether copy on an empty line copies the whole line (on by default), and expanded bookmarks and diff/merge menus at the top right of the editor (only shown when relevant)

Not all of these features are available in Wing IDE Personal and Wing IDE 101.

Documentation

For more information on Wing IDE 5's features, please refer to the integrated documentation in the Help menu. Note that the documentation hosted on our website is for the latest stable release and not for this beta release.

Reporting Bugs

Known bugs in this beta release include:

  • Printing does not work
  • The PyLint tool does not work on Windows
  • Icons look pixelated on Retina displays (but text should be smooth)
  • Keyboard-driven navigation of the GUI is not yet well supported
  • The Source Browser and some other features can be slow

To report bugs, please submit a bug report from the Help menu in Wing IDE, or email us at support at wingware dot com

Please do not post bug reports to the wingide-users mailing list since most users there are not working with the beta.

Compatibility Notes

  • Wing 5 installs side by side with Wing 4, so there is no need to remove the stable version of Wing in order to try the beta release.
  • Wing 5 will read and convert Wing 4 preferences, settings, and projects. Projects should be saved to a new name for use with Wing 5 since they cannot be read by Wing 4
  • Auto-editing is on by default except for auto-entering spaces and block management with repeated presses of the colon key
  • Preferences and some menus have been reorganized
  • File Sets from Wing IDE 4 are now called File Filters. File Sets in Wing 5 are a new feature for creating named sets of files.
  • File Properties have changed to make use of Launch Configurations
  • OS Commands has been redesigned to use Launch Configurations and Named Entry Points
  • The Python Shell starts with current directory set according to the project or main debug file configuration
  • A few key bindings have changed
  • Accelerators may have changed from Wing 4 and are no longer available on OS X because Qt follows Mac user interface guidelines
  • More project data is stored in the shared branch of two-file projects (Python Path, OS Commands)
  • Support for Python <= 2.2 has been dropped on Windows and support for Python <= 2.6 has been dropped on OS X
  • New projects created with Wing Pro are always Shared (Two File) projects
  • For other compatibility details, see the Changes sections of the CHANGELOG.txt file in the release.

Installing

After downloading Wing Pro 5.0.0-b5, Wing Personal 5.0.0-b5, or Wing 101 5.0.0-b5, just install and run Wing IDE as with previous versions.

Upgrading

You may use a series of trial licenses with Wing IDE 5, or you can use a Wing 4 license purchased within a year or covered by Support+Upgrades or that has been upgraded to Wing IDE 5. To upgrade, visit the upgrades page and enter your license number.

Legal

Wingware reserves the right to change pricing and details of the software license for Wing IDE 5 during the beta release process.