Eric is a free

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

 integrated development environment

Integrated development environment

An integrated development environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development...

 for the Python

Python (programming language)

Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...

 and Ruby

Ruby (programming language)

Ruby is a dynamic, reflective, general-purpose object-oriented programming language that combines syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk-like features. Ruby originated in Japan during the mid-1990s and was first developed and designed by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto...

 programming languages. Eric4 is the variant for Python 2 and eric5 is the one for Python 3.

By design, it acts as a front end for several programs, for example the QScintilla editor widget, the python language interpreter, Rope for code refactoring, Python Profiler for code profiling. Any functionality that is not required does not have to be installed. It is written using the PyQt

PyQt

PyQt is a Python binding of the cross-platform GUI toolkit Qt. It is one of the alternatives for GUI programming in Python to Tkinter, which is bundled with Python. Other popular alternatives are PySide, PyGTK, and wxPython. Like Qt, PyQt is free software. PyQt is implemented as a Python...

 Python bindings for the Qt GUI toolkit. It is extensible via a plug-in mechanism. The eric plug-in repository provides various kinds of extensions and is accessible from within the IDE.

The main features are a project manager, an editor with syntax highlighting, debugging, profiling, running python code with support for command-line parameters, unit testing, user interface

User interface

The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...

 design, a console for program output and a task manager (self-updating TODO list).

Several allusions are made to the British comedy group Monty Python

Monty Python

Monty Python was a British surreal comedy group who created their influential Monty Python's Flying Circus, a British television comedy sketch show that first aired on the BBC on 5 October 1969. Forty-five episodes were made over four series...

, which the Python programming language is named after. Eric alludes to Eric Idle

Eric Idle

Eric Idle is an English comedian, actor, author, singer, writer, and comedic composer. He was as a member of the British comedy group Monty Python, a member of the The Rutles on Saturday Night Live and author of the play, Spamalot....

, a member of the group, and IDLE (Python)

IDLE (Python)

IDLE is an integrated development environment for Python, which is bundled in each release of the programming tool since 0.1. It is not included in the python package included with many Linux distributions...

, the standard python IDE shipped with most distributions.

Debugger

Eric includes an integrated graphical debugger, that supports interactive probing while suspended and auto breaking on exceptions.

External links

• Vimal (October 09 2009), My experiences with Eric, a Python IDE