Best IDE for Löve

[CalmoSoft]

Hello All,

Which is the best IDE for Löve?

Greetings,
Gal Zsolt
(~ CalmoSoft ~)

[Positive07]

Hahaha what a discussion, I recommend you check this forum post that has recently come back to life on code editors. There is no "IDE" but you can configure an editor so that it provides IDE features, like syntax highlighting for Lua, autocompletion of LÖVE syntax, linting and error detection before you even save and launching LÖVE without leaving the program, even getting LÖVE console output in a terminal in the same editor. I personally use Atom and have all this features

[CalmoSoft]

Hello,

Thank you very much for your help.

Greetings,
Gal Zsolt
(~ CalmoSoft ~)

[pgimeno]

See also this other related thread: https://www.love2d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=82552

[Le_juiceBOX]

I use sublime. Very nice IDE

[zorg]

Sublime Text (1/2/3) ain't an IDE, it's just an editor.

[Khranos]

I've personally been thoroughly enjoying ZeroBrane studio (which was suggested in one of the above linked threads). Running code is a breeze, organization is pretty good, there is a debugger (which, I can't honestly vouch for as I debug on my own), and it is a free program. Though it's an IDE for Lua, it's easy to change it to Löve.

It's also aimed more toward inexperienced Lua users, but it doesn't really detract much -- if even anything important -- if you are experienced with Lua.

[SugarRayLua]

For those interested in using a text editor to code Love2d on iOS (e.g. iPad), the iOS Textastic app can import Sublime 3 packages, one of which is a Love2D package. I found it works pretty well; After creating a Love2d script, I can then zip up the code into a .love file and export it into the Love app on my iPad to try it out. Here are the instructions if anyone else is interested (I will also post it on the Love2D getting started wiki page):

1) Purchase the iOS Textastic app on the App Store
2) Create a folder in Textastic (while inside the Textastic app "Local Files" section or in the iOS Files app under the Textastic folder) called "#Textastic"
3) go to https://github.com/szensk/subllualove in Safari on your iPad
4) tap the green "Code" button and select "Download ZIP"
5) Unzip the file in the Files app. This will create a folder called "subllualove-master"
6) Move or copy that folder into the folder "On my iPad/Textastic/#Textastic/". This is equivalent to this folder in Textastic: "Local Files/#Textastic/".
7) In Textastic, go to Settings (gear wheel on the bottom left portion of the app) -> Other and tap "Reload Customizations"
8) In File Properties (document looking icon on top right portion of the app) -> Syntax Definition, there is now a new item "LOVE (*.lua)" that you can select after opening a .lua file.

If you have any questions on this process, please contact the Textastic developer (very responsive by email support)

[Sasha264]

Sublime Text can do a lot of things that are prerogative for "IDE" and even beyond that. Personally I use:

1. Customizable syntax highlighting
2. Ability to start a project by single hotkey press (for Löve: without building .love file, which is faster in development)
3. Support of projects, not just files or folders like editors do. Each project can include several folders with arbitrary locations on disk. Ability to quickly switch between projects, keep set of opened files separately for each project.
4. Each project can have personal way (or many ways) to be build. Memorize a preferred way that each project will be build by default and convenient way to customize it (for example run some shader preprocessing before if you work on shaders at given time, and skip that otherwise)
5. View project console output inside editor
6. Work with repositories internally: view file/line history, show diffs, etc (With some help of Sublime Merge. Maybe also without it, I just haven't tried it without it.)
7. Customizable auto-completion (there are some ready for use Löve auto-completion for Sublime, but I don't like it)
8. Navigation between files by variables/functions names
9. Ability to run tests with single hotkey press
10. Ability to run some project-dependent tasks with single hotkey press (like packing sprite atlases for example)
11. For Löve: Ability to pack a game into .love or .exe with single hotkey press
12. Ability to run tests (if you have some) with single hotkey

Not to mention that it is amazingly fast and handy, etc...

What other core features a "true IDE" has? I can think mostly of one thing: breakpoint debugging. Yes, it is not supported. For me it is not a problem, I don't use it much anyway (because I write a lot of multi-threaded things and things that are calculated on GPU). But for some people that is a key feature.