Suggestions for contributions to GeLB

Roadmap of upcoming features

Short-term

For the short-term (minor releases), we are focusing on:

• continuously improving the performance of the generated (BackEnds) code, and
• on fixing some smaller annoyances, which were postponed to accelerate the release of GeLB 1.0; specifically:
  • @gauge blocks:
    • support more than one out-spec
  • @function blocks:
    • support more than one {in & out}-spec
  • @geometry block:
    • add a read_geometry_from_file statement
    • extend the nodes statement, to allow selection of nodes based on arbitrary predicates (conditions which produce a bool result, based on expressions involving the node coordinates); this would allow us to specify shapes such as spheres and cylinders more easily.

Long-term

For the next major release, we are looking into adding support for mesh-refinement.

Contributing support for editors and IDEs

The extent to which a programming language is supported by the tools we normally use as developers can make or break the experience of users of that language. Things like syntax highlighting or auto-completion / completion hints just work when we use an established programming language, and a mature editor/IDE. Obviously, these facilities did not appear out of nowhere -- someone, somewhere, sometime decided to put in the work, to explicitly add support for that particular programming language, in that particular programming environment.

Unfortunately, out of all the programming environments existing out there, most do not (yet) support the GeLB language.

[Call for action] Contributing a new editor/IDE plugin

If you can contribute a plugin for your favorite editor/IDE, please contact us, to:

• describe your plans (in case you need some guidance), and
• let us know about the plugin, so that we can update the list of existing plugins.

[Call for action] Improving an existing editor/IDE plugin

If your editor/IDE is already supported by an existing plugins, but you find the support lacking, we hope you will either:

• Create an issue (for that specific plugin repo) on GitHub, or
• (if you have the "know-how" and can afford the time) fork the plugin repo, fix/improve the code, and create a pull request.

Whatever you may do, thank you for your time!