[pymvpa] Syntax Error

[Scott]

Yaroslav Halchenko wrote:
>> plus, i find it easier to debug in an ide than to copy paste into the 
>> prompt - copy paste into a script file, and pylint will tell you what's 
>> wrong before you run it :)
>>     
> thanks Scott!
>
> would you recommend any particular Python tutorial?
>   
i stumbled around python.org mostly - and playing with visionegg really 
helped too.  i don't learn much from tutorials though, mostly 
trial/error/sourcecode.
> so, is wingide runs pylint automagically prior each run? that is cool.
>
>   
yeah it works quite well.  actually i'm not sure if its pylint proper, 
it may be it's own syntax checker - it runs much faster than spe or 
komodo, last i tried.  and it's not prior to each run, it's every 100ms 
- it feels much more like netbeans, which i love.
> how well does it display docstrings for PyMVPA? do they come useful?
>
>   
when you've written them :)

there is one case where it hangs up-it does not display the docstring 
for a class when there is a docstring in the __init__ function for that 
class, and instead displays the __init__ docstring.  i haven't looked 
extensively into whether this is a wingide or more general bug, but it 
has a nice 1-click link to the class definition, so it's really easy to 
browse the source (with tabbed/paned editors come in super handy...)
> As for debugging, indeed, that is what constantly raises a question for
> me either to switch to some nice IDE. For now, for quick debugging I
> just insert
>
> import pydb
> pydb.debugger()
>
> at the place where I need to invoke debugger.
>
> IPython on the other hand also comes with debugging 'magic', so just
>
> pdb on
>
> and then it would automagically bring a debugger at your hands whenever
> an exception is thrown
>
>   
call me old fashioned, but i thrive on F5->debug current file 
F9->execute with -O flag.

debugging will, of course, stop when an exception is thrown.  but 
nicely, it gives you a gui call stack so you can instantly evaluate code 
at any point on the stack prior to where the exception is thrown (and 
autocomplete and source assistant work, too!).  Plus, you can add 
breakpoints, and even conditional breakpoints, though i haven't tried them.

just to add one more plug, they seem quite active - i get a new version 
every month or so, free.  and i submitted a feature request (to 
right-click evaluate a highlighted line of code in the debug shell with 
the current stack) which they did in about 2 weeks.