What's the best text editor for writing code, with Autosave and Versions?

[printz]

I'm looking for the best OS X text editor with syntax highlighting, overall good code-editing interface, script integration and so on that has Autosave and Versions. Textmate 2 and TextWrangler are free and indeed great, but both lack this feature. For now I'm using Smultron 5, which is decent, but there's still room for improvement (by comparing with Textmate 2's interface), and it's also sometimes buggy. Finally there's also Xcode 4 (with Autosave and Versions, even if unobvious), but I'm looking for something lighter. Being able to visit previous versions of the script file I'm editing is invaluable.

 

[CylonGlitch]

Have you thought about using a version control software package? Personally I use VIM with SVN. This way I can version control more than one thing and I can keep track of very version. One package to do everything almost always seems to be either too big or not complete. Using a version control package designed specifically for that purpose, and an editor for that purpose may be the best solution.

 

[printz]

For large projects I use Git indeed (and ignore Xcode 4's Versions feature), but for simple script files that may be too much. And it's not "one package to do everything", it's a standard OS X feature.

 

[MathRulz]

TextWrangler does Autosave as does its big brother BBEdit.

BBEdit may be able to do what you are after in terms of versions according to the user manual.

http://pine.barebones.com/manual/BBEdit_10_User_Manual.pdf

p. 153:

"Compare Against Previous Version

(Only on OS X 10.7 or later) Provides access to previous versions of the current document using the system’s built-in file versioning capability. You can compare and integrate changes from any prior version into the current document as desired."

BBEdit also integrates with version control systems.

http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/comparison.html

 

[Giuly]

For large projects I use Git indeed (and ignore Xcode 4's Versions feature), but for simple script files that may be too much. And it's not "one package to do everything", it's a standard OS X feature.

Isn't the XCode's Versions feature nothing other than fancy Git?

 

[printz]

Isn't the XCode's Versions feature nothing other than fancy Git?

No. If you open the same file in something like TextEdit and select "Browse previous versions", you'll see the file history as it has been edited by Xcode. It's just that there's no "browse previous versions" feature in Xcode 4. And sure enough you don't have to save (even if the file icons appear "dirty").

EDIT: nice about BBEdit having that feature. Kinda expensive but I may try the demo until I decide I wonder if TextWrangler has it after all…

 

[Giuly]

No. If you open the same file in something like TextEdit and select "Browse previous versions", you'll see the file history as it has been edited by Xcode. It's just that there's no "browse previous versions" feature in Xcode 4.

I mean this: