New IDE features since

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This page contains a list of major IDE features that made Lazarus even more impressive. All features are sorted by the Lazarus release version that they became available in.

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prior to v0.9.4 (2004 and earlier)

form designer guidelines (June 2002)

The Form Designer shows green or blue guidelines when you position components. This help you align or size components correctly. When components are correctly aligned or sized, then guidelines are shown.

Ide features design guidelines.gif

v0.9.10 (2005-10-06)

integrated FPDoc editor

Lazarus IDE is now capable of editing the external fpdoc help (xml) files while you are working with the source code. As you navigate your code, the FPDoc Editor gets updated with the related documentation. External help files prevent you from obfuscating your source code. fpdoc is similar to the JavaDoc technology, but with its own unique features.

Ide features fpdoc editor.gif

v0.9.18 (2006-09-18)

procedure list

This makes finding methods in your current unit really fast! The procedure list enables you to view a list of Free Pascal / Lazarus procedures in the current unit and quickly jump to the implementation. Include files are also supported and the method list gets filtered as you type the partial method name.

Ide features procedure list.gif

v0.9.20 (2006-11-05)

divider lines in editor

The Lazarus editor supports drawing horizontal divider lines between classes, methods, nested procedures, begin..end blocks and many more. So now there is no need to add extra blank lines or {*******...} comments between classes or methods. In the upcoming v0.9.28 release this feature is very customizable in the "Environment > Options > Editor > Divider Drawing" screen. In the following screenshot it shows some divider lines using the default color and a divider line for nested procedures using a customized color.

Ide features divider lines.png

v0.9.24 (2007-11-05)

editor toolbar

The editor toolbar plug-in allows you to define toolbar buttons to any of the IDE menu items.

Ide features editor toolbar.png

v0.9.26 (2008-10-25)

fpdoc help inside editor tooltips

Lazarus can now display fpdoc documentation inside the tooltip help. Packages and Project can all be setup to find the related fpdoc (*.xml) help files, which then enables Lazarus to display the extended help in the tooltips. Simply hover the mouse over various parts of the code to see the tooltips in action. In the image below the mouse was hovered over the TCollection class definition.

Ide features fpdoc tooltip.png

v0.9.28 (to be announced)

block matching

The IDE automatically highlights matching blocks - begin..end pairs.

block matching.gif

code macro OfAll

The code templates of the IDE can use code macros. Writing code macros is easy. The new code macro $OfAll() creates a list of enums for case statements as demonstrated in the image below:

CodeMakroOfAll.gif

(Hint: The separator line between text and folder marks can be enabled via Margin and gutter)

New users will automatically get the new macro. Old users can either delete their ~/.lazarus/lazarus.dci or add the template themselves. How to create the template:

  • IDE menu / Environment / code templates
  • Add. Token: "ofall" or whatever you like. Comment: "case variable of <list of all enums> end"
  • Click ok to add it
  • The new template is selected below.
  • check "Enable macros"
  • The code of the template:
of
|$OfAll()end;
  • click ok to save and close the templates.

Code Templates with macro $Param

Image-Ide features trycf demo.gif

Syncron-Edit

SynEditSyncro.gif

Unsorted

Any items below this point has not been sorted per Lazarus release yet.


build in diff viewer

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refactoring

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favorites in Object Inspector

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integrated unit testing with FPCUnit

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better anchoring and margins in form designer

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file browser

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CodeTools

  • word completion
  • Rename component in Designer auto-renames all instances in unit.

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Include files

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Lazarus Packages

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Enclose Selection

Select some text in editor. Right Click to get popup menu. Select "Refactoring > Enclose Selection".