Komodo IDE/Edit Release Notes

Welcome to Komodo, ActiveState's Integrated Development Environment (IDE). These Release Notes cover what's new, detailed changes and bug fixes and known issues for the development version of Komodo IDE and Komodo Edit.

What's New in Komodo IDE/Edit

• Find/Replace improvements: A better interface for multi-line text entry, support for Replace over multiple files, and new options to single-file Replace, and Find in Project.
• Unit testing: Support in Komodo for unit test frameworks for PHP, Python, Ruby, and Perl.
• Unit Test Integration allows you to run Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby, and Ruby on Rails test suites within Komodo.
• Abbreviations: Similar to the widely used trigger macro, this feature lets you quickly insert code snippets by entering abbreviations for them. Several useful default snippets are included, and additional ones can be added easily in the Toolbox.
• Asynchronous SCC commands: Changes in Komodo's process handling now allow for SCC commands (e.g. svn up) to work in the background while you continue to work.
• Code intelligence improvements: Better support for PHP, Tcl 8.5 and Perl 5.10.
• Numerous bug fixes and improvements.

Detailed Changes and Bug Fixes in Komodo IDE/Edit

Changes:

• The default installation directory on Windows has changed. Previous versions installed in a directory which included the version number (e.g. "ActiveState Komodo IDE 4.2"), which allowed for side-by-side installations of different versions of Komodo. If you wish to do this, manually specify an install directory with a version number.

Enhancements:

• New Feature Showcases in the documentation (Bug 61187)
• Added php constants and class constants to the stdlib cix files.
• Vi emulation: Added scrolling commands (Bug 73301)
• Support for Rails 2 in the Ruby on Rails project template.

Bug Fixes:

• Editor:
  • Fixed indentation commands ignoring some preferences in XML. (Bug 73695)
  • Line-copy with no selection moves cursor to start of following line. (Bug 75251)
• Find/Replace:
  • Selected string no longer skipped in replace. (Bug 27208)
  • Alerts and messages are now shown in the statusbar to be less intrusive. (Bug 65220)
  • Find in Files: Fixed problem preventing editing of files other than the one currently selected in the results tab. (Bug 45636)
  • Find in Files: "Search in" sub dialog buttons fixed. (Bug 67360)
  • Open/Find toolbar: The find "in" textbox now auto-completes properly. (Bug 74326)
  • Open/Find toolbar: Fixed delete key behavior in toolbar fields. (Bug 65750)
• SCC:
  • Perforce: Fixed an error where spurious error messages would appear in the Command Output window. (Bug 75235)
  • Perforce "open for edit" dialog box no longer appears more than once. (Bug 75217)
  • Perforce now working with UNC paths. (Bug 67182)
  • Tab icons now update properly after a commit. (Bug 72880)
  • Perforce: Submit form now always uses a newline separator for the "description" field. (Bug 73103)
  • No longer displaying superfluous "file has changed" notification on commit. (Bug 74471)
  • SCC tab icons now update properly after commit. (Bug 72880)
  • CVS and SVN now work when the "recursive status checking" is enabled. (Bug 7506775078)
• PHP:
  • Autocomplete working with CodeIgniter. (Bug 75052)
  • Calltips no longer fooled by invalid PHPDoc. (Bug 73819)
  • Fixed UDL parsing of single line comments. (Bug 73829, 73837)
  • Improved error messages for broken PHP configurations. (Bug 73485)
  • Fixed problem causing PHP remote debugger to ignore breakpoints. (Bug 54147)
  • Added completion support for magic methods. (Bug 69758)
  • Fixed problem with Go to Definition not working with multiple files of the same name in the include path. (Bug 71870)
  • Fixed xdebug binary crashing the php interpreter on Windows Vista. (Bug 75127)
• Perl: No longer showing bogus proximity variable '${' (Bug 74380)
• Documentation:
  • PHP remote debugging XDEBUG_SESSION_START instructions more explicit. (Bug 74088)
  • More accurate description of SCC edit icon. (Bug 74144)
  • Added page on how to get support. (Bug 74211)
  • Perl tutorial no longer has a module dependency. (Bug 33215)
• Vi emulation:
  • 'tT' and ';,' find commands fixed. (Bug 67045)
  • Change "c" with search "/" now works. (Bug 73315)
• If spellcheck dictionaries are installed in the profile area (such as c:\Documents and Settings\user\Application Data\ActiveState\KomodoIDE\4.3), they will automatically be copied to other profile directories in future upgrades. (Bug 74629)
• When upgrading to a new version of Komodo, usernames and passwords for remote accounts are now imported automatically. (Bug 70187)
• XML files that don't have recognized extensions (e.g. *.rdf files) retain highlighting after a save-as operation. (Bug 71648)
• Fix syntax checking always reporting "in progress" (Bug 74372)
• New files use proper encoding and document preferences. (Bug 74098)
• Update readonly/writable status of non-SCC files (Bug 73415)
• Snippet insertion properly respects your indentation preferences. (Bug 72127)
• Soft Characters: "Editor: Move One Character Right" (e.g. right arrow) can now be used to harden a soft character sequence. (Bug 73901)
• Remote files: Fixed problem with "sticky" incorrect login details. (Bug 68773)
• Fixed a problem opening files that have been deleted and re-created outside of Komodo. (Bug 68285)
• Recorded macros: Find_ReplaceAllInMacro now correctly escape backslashes in regular expressions. (Bug 70740)
• Fixed problems in Kid language support (Bug 72556)
• Fixed line-end changes failing after the first change. (Bug 72694)
• Fixed printing problem encountered when setting no wrap for long lines. (Bug 73741)
• Tcl lexer now ends braced terms correctly. (Bug 73762)
• Linux: Fixed a Komodo crash triggered by using some Ubuntu window themes. (Bug 73850)
• Build: Fixed OpenKomodo build failure on Ubuntu 7.10. (Bug 73926)
• Fixed problem in changing file properties. (Bug 74097)
• PDK: Fixed "Build Standalone Perl Application..." command (for older PDK versions, Windows only). (Bug 74275)
• Check configuration correctly reports on ActivePerl 5.10. (Bug 74369)
• Remote debugging: Fixed problem with program output not appearing in output window. (Bug 74389)
• Fixed problem detecting default encoding. (Bug 74434)
• Live Folders: Fixed problem preventing updates when multiple live folders/projects point to the same directory. (Bug 74448)
• Drag and drop into Komodo now works with non-ASCII characters in the path. (Bug 72873)
• Macros: Fixed koIFileEx.hasChanged for Python macros. (Bug 73435)
• Fixed problem with not re-checking read only status of files before a save. (Bug 73477, 73415)
• Status codes from run commands now decoded properly. (Bug 36081)
• Fixed a problem causing the Preferences dialog to hang when opening to the PDK panel. (Bug 72937)
• pydbgp no longer ignores logging level arguments. (Bug 74736)

Known Issues

To view the status of outstanding Komodo issues, including those that have been fixed in this release, or to add comments or additional issues, please visit the Komodo Bug Database.

Installation & Upgrade

• Windows Vista will prompt you to either 'Allow' or 'Deny' the installation. Click on 'Allow' and Komodo will install normally.
• The Komodo installer requires up to 230 MB in your TMP directory (as indicated by the value of your 'TMP' environment variable) during installation, even if you plan to install Komodo to another drive. If you do not have the required space on this drive, manually set the 'TMP' environment variable to another directory with sufficient space. Ensure that you have enough space, temporarily, for installation. (Bug 7057)
• If you try to install Komodo on Windows and the MSI install fails with error 2355, your MSI file is corrupt. Please download Komodo again and re-run the MSI install. (Bug 7405)

Startup

• The first time Komodo is run after installation, it must register a number of components with the operating system. This causes the first launch to be considerably slower than subsequent launches.

Editing

• Linux users may need to install the SCIM platform packages for non-ASCII text entry. See "Linux Software Prerequisites" in the Installation Guide for details. (Bug 70812)
• Autocompletion on the following Python Win32 modules is not yet available: dbc, perfmon, pywintypes, win2kras, dde, pythoncom, and the binary sub-modules of win32com.
• The macro recorder will record events that it cannot handle, such as the opening of dialogs. The only dialog that can be opened via a macro is the Find dialog; other dialogs will cause the macro to stop.
• Languages that are read right to left and Asian languages are not supported. All Latin and Cyrillic languages are fully supported. (Bug 29702)
• On slow networks, users may notice performance degradation when editing files on network machines. Performance can be improved by disabling the Komodo function that checks if files on disk have changed. Use the Editor Preferences to disable this feature. (Bug 18297)
• Interpolation shortcuts in snippets are not executed when the snippet is inserted in the Editor Pane via dragging and dropping.
• On Linux, GTK2 hard codes 'Ctrl'+'Shift' to use international input. Therefore, all key bindings involving 'Ctrl'+'Shift'+ (any valid hexadecimal character} do not work in Komodo. A workaround is to start Komodo with the command: export GTK_IM_MODULE=xim; ./komodo'. Otherwise, key bindings of this kind must be changed. (Bug 38205)
• When copying text that does not have Windows line endings into another application, which expects Windows line endings, the text may not retain the desired formatting. The text is often pasted as a single line. (Bug 36791)
• Code snippets that are 8-bit-encoded and contain high-bit characters may have the wrong encoding (or no encoding) when inserted from the Toolbox into a UTF-8 encoded file in the Editor Pane. (Bug 36769)
• When editing a code comment in Komodo you may use <Shift+Enter> to start a new line within the comment -- the comment prefix is added automatically. Komodo may fail to properly add the comment prefix if many new lines are added quickly with repeated <Shift+Enter> presses. (Bug 38658)

Debugging

• Python: Breakpoints will not work with the Psyco extension enabled. The Komodo FAQ has a work-around solution.
• Tcl 8.5: Tcl Beta releases contain only version-specific executables (e.g. tclsh85.exe and wish85.exe). Komodo does not automatically find these in the path. To use them, specify the executables manually in Edit|Preferences...|Languages|Tcl|Interpreters, or create non-versioned symlinks/shortcuts to the versioned executables.
• The Perl debugger uses alarm() internally. This can conflict with some Perl frameworks and modules (such as POE) which use alarm() as well. To work around this problem, add alarm=0 to the PERLDB_OPTS environment variable (in the Environment tab of the Debugger Options) which stops the debugger from using alarm(). With this work-around in place, the Break Now button and menu item will not work in debugging sessions.
• Using the JavaScript debugger on files with mapped URIs can yield confusing results. Komodo will open the mapped source file rather than querying Firefox for the runtime JavaScript.
• Python debugging with IronPython does not currently work as there is no support for Python debugging hooks in IronPython.
• In PerlApp executables, it is now possible to step into loaded modules, but not to set breakpoints in them.
• The Komodo JavaScript Debugger is incompatible with the FireBug Firefox extension. FireBug must be manually disabled (Tools|Firebug|Disable Firebug) for the JavaScript debugger to work. (Bug 47208)
• PHP 5.0.0, 5.0.1 and 5.0.2 do not work with the debugger extension. Use PHP versions 4.3.10 or greater, or 5.0.3 or greater, including 5.1.
• If the debug listener (Debug|Listen for Debugger Connections) is off, multithreaded applications may not run or debug as expected. Only the main thread operates through the debugger. To debug multithreaded applications, turn on debug listening prior to debugging. (Debug listening is turned on by default.) (Bug 32776)
• PHP configurations that use Zend Extensions (such as PHP Accelerator) are not compatible with the Komodo PHP debugger. (Bug 21890)
• Due to the way the core Perl interpreter works, it is not possible to step over "require" statements. (Bug 18776)
• You cannot debug 'freestanding' executables created with the PDK in Komodo. Instead, build a 'dependant' executable, which requires a local install of ActivePerl.
• The variable watcher does not work when debugging \\machine\d$\path\to\perl_script.pl. It does work when opening the same file via a UNC path that does not include a '$' character. (Bug 19558)
• When debugging remote applications, Komodo fails if the remote process does not have valid stdout and stderr handles. GUI applications, such as those started with "wperl.exe" or "pythonw.exe", or those using the Pythonwin or wxPython frameworks, or those with certain embedded applications, can have invalid stdout and stderr handles. Until we resolve this issue, try to run and debug your remote program under perl.exe or python.exe.
• Python, XSLT and PHP debugging require TCP/IP to be installed and properly configured, even if you are debugging scripts locally. While TCP/IP is configured by default on most systems, early versions of Windows may require manual TCP/IP configuration.
• When debugging a GUI script in Komodo, adding a "watched variable" when not stopped at a breakpoint can cause Komodo to hang. You must manually terminate the script being debugged to stop Komodo from hanging. The problem occurs because the GUI script, while in its message loop, does not respond to Komodo's request for the variable value. (Bug 23516)
• If the Komodo debugger is configured to use a specific port, when Komodo is shut down, the port is sometimes not immediately released. If Komodo is restarted before the port is released by the operating system, a message is displayed advising that the system is unable to bind that port. As a workaround, we suggest configuring port 0 as the Komodo debugging port and using the debugger proxy for remote debugging. (Bug 32821)
• Breaking into a running Perl script can only occur while crossing sub boundaries in the Perl code, as that's currently the only chance the Perl debugger has to check to see if the IDE has sent the break command. (Bug 35611)
• When debugging Perl, if you set a breakpoint on the while statement, the debugger stops on the breakpoint only once, namely before the first pass through the loop. This is a limitation in the Perl interpreter. (Bug 34866)
• Komodo debugger uses TCP/IP networking for communications. On systems with firewalls installed, the debugger may fail if the firewall is not configured to allow Komodo to listen for connections. On Windows, you may see a "Windows Security Alert" dialog asking if you want to allow Komodo to listen for connections, you will need to unblock Komodo. (Bug 21684)
• The Perl debugger cannot trap fatal runtime errors. Users can accomplish this in their code by wrapping problematic code in an eval block, and then testing for an exception. (Bug 33855)
• Komodo does not provide proper source debugging in Python exec and eval statements. This is a limitation of Python's interpreter. (Bug 40336)
• When debugging PHP on a remote Linux machine from a local Windows machine, the debugging option "Try to find files on the local system when remote debugging" has no effect. This is due to differences in Unix and Win32 file paths. (Bug 39137)
• When debugging Python, Komodo does not permit you to set local variables in the interactive shell. However, you can edit those values from the program's variable viewers, such as the Watch and Locals panes on the Debug tab. (Bug 36794)
• When debugging PHP scripts on Komodo with CGI emulation, you may need to change the setting for cgi.force_redirect in the php.ini file. You may also need to set an environment variable in the Debugger Options dialog box: "REDIRECT_STATUS=200 OK". These settings vary depending on your system and the configuration of PHP. (Bug 35021)
• When Debugging PHP, the HTML pane of the Output tab does not refresh automatically. To refresh the contents of this pane, click the "Reload HTML view" button on the Output tab. (Bug 36999)
• Komodo supports full Unicode debugging with Perl 5.8. Although Perl 5.6 can be used for debugging programs with single-byte encodings (e.g. cp1251), it is recommended that programmers with multi-byte character sets upgrade to Perl 5.8.5 or better. (Bug 36760)
• When debugging Python, if you launch the debugger from a directory containing a module with the same name as one of the modules used by the debugger, the wrong file is used. For example, if you have a file named logging.py in the directory where the debugger is launched, the debugger will fail. (Bug 36783)
• When stepping through Perl files, the Komodo debugger displays the wrong print results in the Locals window of the Debug tab. This is because Perl provides only one iterator for each collection variable. The Komodo debugger must iterate through a hash or an array in order to display the values in Komodo. A workaround is to display the Watch pane instead of the Locals pane, and type the names of the expressions that you want to view. (Bug 33668)

Interactive Shell

• Perl: Only pattern variables $1 .. $9 are preserved across each query. (Bug 34528)
• Python: The getpass package requires the use of a tty on unix systems. Komodo does not provide a tty in it's interactive shell so getpass will fail with an exception. (Bug 34259)

Source Code Control

• A bug in CVS will cause WinCVS and TortoiseCVS to detect file changes when a Komodo project has merely been opened. The problem is likely a bug in the cvshome.org executable or in the cvsnt.org executable, which are used by both WinCVS and TortoiseCVS. (Bug 21085)
• Komodo's integration with the Perforce commit/submit command cannot commit files that are not in the default changelist. These files must be submitted via an external interface (e.g. p4, P4Win). Note that any files checked out inside Komodo are in the default changelist, so this limitation should only apply to users who already use an external interface to their Perforce repository. (Bug 27070)
• If the Perforce connection cannot be established, checking the status of files in a Perforce repository will hang Komodo. (Bug 35058)
• If you are using CVS Source Code Control, note that the very first time you log in to a repository, cvs.exe fails to create the .cvspass file correctly and will return an error. Repeat the command to login a second time and correctly generate the file. This is a CVS bug. (Bug 20353)

Mac OS X

• If you have two drives with the same name, and you use the file open dialog in a mozilla application, the directory menu (top middle of dialog) may crash when clicked. To avoid this, rename one of the hard drives.
• New Custom Menus created in a Project or in the Toolbox will not appear until Komodo has been restared.
• Throughout the Komodo documentation there are references to key bindings that use the 'Meta' key. This key may be better known to OS X users as the 'Command' key. (Bug 41959)
• Komodo will shut down and restart itself the first time it is run after installation. (Bug 40143)
• Display of text during editing ("painting") may sometimes be slow or pause momentarily.
• Certain UI elements stop working after changing key bindings. Restarting Komodo fixes this. (Bug 38683)
• When saving a file, Komodo does not set file information (type and creator) for the OS X Finder to know that Komodo created the file. (Bug 38745)
• Breakpoints cannot be removed when debugging XSLT scripts. (Bug 40072)
• PHP debugging will not work with the PHP build distributed with OS X because it does not load external modules. To use PHP debugging on OS X, build PHP from source or download a binary from http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/php
  (Bug 39901)
• Komodo is sometimes recognized as a web browser by some applications on OS X (e.g. Safari's "Default Web Browser" setting). Using Komodo as the default web browser is not recommended.
• Application menu items that have multi-key key bindings will not show their key bindings in a pop-up tool tip on OS X. This is a limitation in OS X.
• Context menus may not display unless you hold down the mouse button for a period of time. This is because the Komodo editor is implemented in Mozilla as a plugin, and it does not access the apropriate context menu event to handle this behaviour properly without interfering with other mouse events (for example, drag and drop). (Bug 41216)
• Due to a limitation in the Mozilla code base, key bindings for the Next File and Previous File options on the Window menu are not displayed next to the menu items. The key bindings are 'Meta'+'PageDown' to view the next file and 'Meta'+'PageUp' to view the previous file. (Bug 40716)

Linux

• The Fonts and Colors pane in the Preferences dialog box displays the same list of fonts in both the Fixed and Proportional lists. There is no programmatic way to identify whether a font is proportional or not on GTK; therefore, users must know the properties of the individual fonts when modifying these values. (Bug 27206)
• Install Komodo into a directory path that only includes alphanumeric characters. Komodo is known to have trouble with paths that include spaces and some non-alphanumeric characters.
• Key bindings defined in the window manager (such as KDE) take precedence over Komodo key bindings. In the case of conflicts, you must either change the Komodo key bindings or the window manager key bindings. (Bug 30926)
• You cannot move an existing Komodo installation to a new directory. You must uninstall Komodo from the existing location and reinstall it in the new location. (Bug 19478)
• When using the PHP Configuration Wizard, you must have write access to any directories you specify in the wizard. (Bug 37176)
• Red Hat Linux 9.0 is known to have threading library bugs in its glibc that may cause Komodo to hang in certain situations. The recommended solution is to upgrade to the latest glibc for Red Hat Linux 9.0. (Bug 24340)
• Using colon-separated include paths in the Perl shebang line causes a parse failure on some versions of Perl. Instead of using "/usr/bin/perl -cwT -I/path1:/path2 yourscript.pl", try using multiple include arguments such as "/usr/bin/perl -cwT -I/path1 -I/path2 yourscript.pl"
  (Bug 33524)
• Komodo may not start up correctly on some Linux systems if C++ compatibility libraries have not been installed. On Fedora and Red Hat systems, install the "compat-libstdc++" package. On SuSE, install the "compat" package. On Gentoo, as root, run emerge lib-compat. This is not thought to be a problem on Debian systems. (Bug 36244)
• Komodo will work on Debian/Ubuntu AMD64 with some manual configuration (some libraries were not properly ported to support 32-bit applications). (Bug 41368) Run Komodo from a shell script which sets certain environment variables:

  #!/bin/sh
  export GTK_PATH=/usr/lib32/gtk-2.0/
  export PANGO_RC_FILE=/etc/pango32/pangorc
  komodo
  

  The pangorc file should contain the following:

  [Pango]
  ModuleFiles=/etc/pango32/pango.modules
  [PangoX]
  AliasFiles=/etc/pango/pangox.aliases
  

  More information on running 32 bit Mozilla applications on AMD64 can be found here.

Other

• A limitation in the parser used by the DOM Viewer causes HTML elements embedded in JavaScript strings to appear as element nodes of the current document. Placing the JavaScript in a CDATA section or a comment avoids this problem.
• Komodo inherits a Mozilla bug whereby certain video drivers on Windows cause Komodo to crash. If you experience this behavior, upgrade your video driver to the latest version. If the problem persists, reduce the color definition assigned to the driver (Control Panel|Display|Settings). (Bug 32746)
• Komodo inherits a Mozilla bug regarding display on dual-monitor systems where the secondary monitor is to the left of the primary monitor (causing negative coordinate results). The Komodo display occasionally fails to refresh; Komodo must be stopped and restarted to fix the display (Bug 26852)
• When using Komodo's Preview in Browser feature, users running Mozilla on Windows XP Pro, Windows 2000 Pro and Windows 98 may find that they cannot exit Komodo if Mozilla is still open. If this should occur, close all open browser windows before exiting Komodo. (Bug 26431)
• The Palm Desktop for Windows software makes exclusive use of the 'Ctrl'+'Shift'+'T' key combination, thus making this combination unavailable in Komodo. (Bug 27851)
• When using the PDK Build Standalone Application feature in Komodo with Perl 5.8.0 on a Linux installation where the environment is set to use UTF-8, you must add a module 'utf8' on the modules tab. This is the equivalent of 'perlapp --add utf8'. This does not affect Perl 5.6.x or future versions of Perl 5.8.1 or higher. (Bug 26898)
• On Windows NT, some interactive commands may not work properly when run from the Command Output tab of the Output Pane. You must run these commands in a separate shell. (Bug 23176)
• Perforce client version 2001.1 and previous for Windows is known to hang when used for Komodo's Perforce integration. Upgrading to the most recent version of Perforce is known to fix the problem. (Bug 19959)
• The Output tab cuts off lines at 250 characters. (Bug 20711)
• Macros will not record certain commands, including (but possibly not limited to) 'Ctrl'+'Shift'+'B'|'R'|'E'|'D' (toggle toolbars or button text), 'Ctrl'+'Shift'+'N' (new default file), and View as Language menu items.
• If you are using the Pop-Up Stopper ad-blocking program (Pop-Up Zapper on OS X), it will close the Rx Toolkit window immediately after it is opened. (Bug 21768)
• When you schedule a new file to be added using CVS, CVS will not permit you to remove the file from the repository using the "revert changes" command. (Bug 27192)
• Users of the Japanese version of Windows XP may experience difficulties in starting Komodo.
• The Open field in the Open/Find Toolbar does not automatically display a drop-down list of directories when an UNC path is typed. Currently, the list is only displayed when a the path includes a subdirectory. (Bug 29011)
• When creating a "diff" in Komodo (Tools|Compare Files), the line endings of the files are normalized to Unix style line endings. Lines in files that have different line endings are not displayed differently in the diff (unless other differences are present), but a warning is provided to the user in the 'diff' window, or the 'no difference' dialog. (Bug 32932)
• In Komodo's Rx Toolkit, the match offsets for unicode or high-bit data are incorrect. When matching, the program does not account for UTF-8 multibyte characters. (Bug 33287)
• When adding new key bindings via the Preferences dialog box, Komodo displays a message indicating that the key bindings will not take effect until Komodo is restarted. However, some changes do take effect immediately.(Bug 36710)
• If you rename a folder that was added to a custom menu, the name is changed in Komodo's Toolbox but not on the menu itself. A workaround is to move the renamed folder out and then back into the associated custom menu icon in the Toolbox. (Bug 36679)
• A newly created custom menu is added to the Toolbox but is not immediately displayed alongside existing toolbars. Restarting Komodo causes the new toolbar to display. (Bug 40078)