A new tutorial, based around one of the presentations I made at EclipseWorld 2005 has been published at IBM developerWorks.

The tutorial is based on the presentation I made on building Perl applications using Eclipse and the EPIC plug-in.

Here’s the summary info from the tutorial so you can get a better idea of the content:

For many Perl programmers, the typical development environment is probably an
editor like Emacs coupled with a command-line environment. The problem is you
tend to spend most of your day switching between Emacs and the command line,
and it gets worse if you are doing Web development, as you have to switch between
Emacs, your command line, and your Web browser as you write, execute, and check
logs for information. Surprisingly, there are few IDEs that have really captured the
Perl programmer’s imagination over the years, which is why EPIC and Eclipse fills
such a void.

EPIC is a complete plug-in suite that supports a new “nature” within Eclipse. The
EPIC plug-in incorporates extensions to the editor so that it understands Perl
structure and layout. The plug-in also adds additional views and interfaces to your
code, and related information enables you to view documentation, execute your Perl
applications, and debug them.

About this tutorial
This tutorial will look at the basics of the EPIC plug-in before moving on to an
examination of the EPIC system using a real-world example, developing a small
module and script entirely within Eclipse that supports RSS parsing. You’ll use this
as an opportunity to examine other areas, such as the integration with Perldoc, code
folding and refactoring — all of which can make the application development process
run more smoothly. By the end, you will have a good understanding of how the EPIC
plug-in can be used to develop your Perl applications within Eclipse.

You can read the full tutorial.

Look out for a forthcoming follow-up piece on debugging Perl applications within Eclipse.