Next Generation Coding - Sublime Text 2 and Git
Little History:
Typically I write my project in text editors like TextWrangler (the little free brother of BBEdit), but since I needed to rework my workflow, I decided to rethink my complete tool chain.
I've already started to use preprocessors like nanoc and build scripts like HTML5 Boilerplate's Build Scripts, but I know that I can do it better. Fist thing to do is using a version control system. Influenced by Github, I did try git - "Wow". "How could I live without it?". Now there is this version control, the text editor should be git compatible. Because I used the incredible IDE Netbeans for my Java projects, I did give it a try as an web development environment. Besides the great git integration, I did not need any of the other powerful features of Netbeans. Therefore I search the web for a great web IDE and found Coda from Panic, which recently released version 2. Although Coda is a beautiful, fantastic web IDE, I realized that I need a cross platform and fast text editor with git integration, not a fully blown IDE.
Sublime Text 2
As many web developer recommend Sublime Text 2, I did give a full try. First it seems to be 'just another' text editor with syntax highlighting and a sleek user interface. The web site of Sublime Text does not even indicate that if provides a truly powerful feature - the great extensibility. A whole community is developing plug-ins or "packages" (as they are called in Sublime Text) to extend the functionality and personalize the experience. If you need Git integration, there it is sublime-text-2-git. Because installation of packages should be made simple, the developer Will Bond has written a package manager - the Sublime Package Control. The simple shortcut (Windows/Linux: 'ctrl + shift + p', Mac: 'command + shift + p') opens the full feature set of Sublime Text 2 - a searchable menu. But there is a lot more like code snippets, build system support, fast file switching and full screen mode. It will require sometime to recognize the capabilities of this text editor, but it will fulfill my needs.
published on 25 May 2012
written by Martin Hauser