In the past, some of our customers, especially those who are compiling files that are not on their local hard drive, have been complaining that degree 6 takes an enormous amount of time to complete.

The reason is pretty simple. At degree 6, we fetch the name of the classes so that proper class name resolution is done in the later degrees.

We just released EiffelStudio 6.3 and are already working on the next 6.4 iteration. EiffelStudio 6.4 is a maintenance release toward a full adoption of the ECMA standard. Some of the changes in ECMA require a change in our libraries.

The 6.3 release of EiffelStudio will come with a new testing tool combining unit and system level testing. The tool is currently under development but is already capable of managing, creating and executing tests. At this point I would like to give a short overview on what has been implemented, how to tool is used and what functionality will be added in the upcoming weeks.

This blog entry is only for those Windows user out there. It's concerning tips and tricks for the EiffelStudio Windows Installers.

EiffelStudio 6.2 has just been released. For those who haven't followed the intermediate releases, here is an idea of what is included:

• Added new contract editor tool to ease edition of contracts on routines and classes.
• Added Eiffel Information System which let you connect external documentation to your Eiffel code and vice versa.

I don't know if you are like me but often when you redefine a feature, I used to copy/paste the comments so that I still know what the feature is supposed to do in english terms (in addition to the contracts of course). In 6.2, we are introducing a new facility so that in the editor and in the flat-view of the feature you do not have to do the copy/paste.

I've been in hiatus from using EiffelStudio on the Mac for a while because since the upgrade to Leopard, EiffelStudio exhibited some strange behavior related to expose actions. As a result elements of the UI, that are custom drawn, went missing. I was left unable to see set breakpoints and the docked tool tabs.