Leopard IDE

A lightweight PyQt6 IDE for Leopard, built on the Base IDE skeleton.

Requirements

Leopard IDE needs the Leopard language installed first — lexer, parser, interpreter, and GUI runtime, published as its own standalone leopard-lang pip package in a separate repository:

github.com/CFFinch62/Leopard

Clone that repo and follow its README to install it (pip install -e ".[gui,build]" from inside it) before setting up this IDE. leopard-lang is a real, independent CLI tool in its own right (leopard run script.lep) — this IDE is one consumer of it, not the only way to run a .lep file.

This repo doesn't embed a copy of the language; requirements.txt installs it as an editable, path-based dependency (-e ../../../LANGUAGES/Leopard[gui,build]), so the IDE always runs whatever's in that checkout's src/leopard_lang/ with no rebuild step. That relative path matches how the two repos sit side by side on the machine this was developed on — it only resolves as-is if you clone both repos into that same layout (a LANGUAGES/Leopard checkout, three directories up from this one). If you've cloned this repo somewhere else, either match that layout, or install leopard-lang[gui,build] yourself into this project's virtual environment and drop that line from requirements.txt.

Features

• Top menu bar (File, Edit, View, Theme)
• Toolbar, including Run and Build (compile the current program to a standalone executable)
• Left file browser with navigation controls and bookmarks
• Tabbed editor area with line numbers, current-line highlight, and full Leopard syntax highlighting (keywords, builtins, strings, numbers, comments, operators, .property access)
• Find/Replace dialog (Ctrl+F)
• Console/terminal panel, with an input line wired to the active language provider
• Status bar with cursor position
• Generic open/save workflow with error dialogs on failure, including a .lep-aware file filter
• Window size, splitter layout, and theme persisted across restarts

Run

cd LEOPARD-IDE
./run.sh

run.sh creates venv/ and installs requirements automatically (via setup.sh) on first run, then launches the app. Run ./setup.sh directly if you just want to (re)provision the environment without launching.

Build a standalone binary

The IDE itself:

source venv/bin/activate
python build.py

Produces a self-contained app in dist/LeopardIDE/ via PyInstaller.

A Leopard program you've written: click the Build toolbar button (or run leopard build script.lep from the command line, outside the IDE) to compile the current program into its own standalone, double-clickable executable — no Python installation required on the machine that runs it. This is the feature the original 2013 app's "Compile" button always claimed to do but never did.

Leopard support

app/leopard_language.py's LeopardLanguageProvider:

• file_extensions — .lep.
• run(source, terminal) — tokenizes and parses source via leopard_lang; a bare (no-window) script runs through the interpreter directly. A program with a window/text window/graphics window header runs via leopard_lang.gui.app_host.run_window(program, existing_app=...), passing this IDE's own already-running QApplication — the same function leopard run itself calls standalone, just reusing the IDE's event loop instead of spawning a second one. Syntax/runtime errors are written to the terminal pane with their line number, the same format leopard run prints.
• compile(source, name, output_dir, terminal) — the Build button's entry point; calls leopard_lang.build.compile_program and reports progress and any errors to the terminal pane.
• create_highlighter — full Leopard syntax highlighting (LeopardHighlighter in the same file): reserved words, builtins/turtle commands, strings, numbers, comments, operators, and .property access, each its own color.

Examples

examples/ has sixteen complete, runnable programs arranged as a full curriculum — from bare-script fundamentals (variables, control flow, functions, lists, file I/O — no window at all) through every window kind (controls, dialogs, menus, turtle graphics, text windows, sound) to two capstone programs that combine it all. See examples/README.md for the complete, ordered list and what each lesson covers.

Open any of them in the IDE and click Run. LANGUAGE_GUIDE.md (in the Leopard repo) walks through the language feature-by-feature with the same examples; GRAMMAR.md has the complete, precise spec.

Other extension points

• Expand the file browser with project management features such as new folders, rename, and delete.
• Add a preferences dialog for editor font size, tab width, etc.

Acknowledgments

The Leopard language this IDE hosts is a modernized, ground-up reimplementation of Brandon Watts's original 2013 Liberty BASIC application, leopard.bas (see original -source/ in the Leopard repo, originally distributed via leopardprogramming.com) — the vocabulary and spirit of the language (windows, named controls, turtle graphics) trace back to his design.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.