Libraries for every need
Eiffel Software announced today the release of EiffelStudio 20.05, the latest version of its Integrated Development Environment (IDE). EiffelStudio, is a comprehensive suite of tools enabling programmers to produce correct, reliable, and maintainable software systems.
According to Bertrand Meyer, founder and CTO of Eiffel Software, “it’s all about reuse!”. Eiffel was designed from the start to allow programmers to leverage on existing software so that they can exert their creativity to innovative developments. EiffelStudio 20.05 is a particularly welcome advance for Eiffel programmers, giving them access to a whole new set of components in various areas.
According to Eiffel Software’s Javier Velilla, who led the 20.05 library effort, “there are lots of useful components out there, but they are written in different programming languages and not always easy to integrate into your software if you don’t use the exact language, compiler, operating system and version. Eiffel makes this all easier by integrating these components under a single umbrella and making them readily available to all programmers without any effort.”
The libraries provided in EiffelStudio 20.05 include wrap_yaml (a YAML parser and emitter library), wrap_gsl (providing access to the features of the GNU Scientific Library, wrap_tidy (providing access to the full power of HTML Tidy), wrap_libgit2 (a portable implementation of the Git core methods) and many more. The full list is in the release notes.
Jocelyn Fiat, another member of the Eiffel Software team, explains: “Many of the existing libraries are written in C, a very effective but low-level language. Direct usage in C is fraught with risks of errors at every step. We give access to all that low-level code at a much higher level of abstraction, using all of Eiffel’s advanced facilities for object-oriented programming, inheritance, Design by Contract™ and documentation, so that programmers have all the benefits without the trouble”. “it’s incredible how much fantastic functionality exists out there, but buried under old, hard-to-use and unsafe APIs (Application Program Interfaces). In many cases programmers don’t even know it exists. Eiffel Software identifies the gems, selects them carefully, and makes them easily available to programmers” Adds Meyer.
The Eiffel Libraries project is an extensive initiative intended to identify the world’s best reusable IT components and provide them to the world. 20.05 is a particularly significant advance of that project, but look ahead in forthcoming releases for new, exciting components that bring even more power to the Eiffel developer.
To learn more about what’s already available, see the EiffelStudio 20.05 release notes. To start, download EiffelStudio from http://eiffel.com.
EiffelStudio is based on the Eiffel programming language, the most extensive implementation of modern object-oriented technology, standardized through ECMA and the International Standards Organization. Its core concepts, native only to Eiffel, such as Design by Contract™, seamless development, automatic testing, void safety, parallel programming, and modelling facilities allow developers to write predictable and controllable applications that are easy to maintain.
EiffelStudio received the prestigious ACM Software Systems Award and is used by developers and design-team leaders in challenging enterprise environments in all areas of software development such as finance, health, defense, telecom and others. Applications built with EiffelStudio run flawlessly 24×7, 365 days a year.
