Best "Visual Studio" Alternative On Linux

Microsoft ISV writes: "We are beginning the next major release of our product, and we have been a Microsoft ISV for many years. In a few months Microsoft will be entering our market, and we wish to hedge our bets by supporting Linux in this next new major release. Can you ask your readership what is the best 'Visual Studio' like IDE for Linux? Especially for an ISV who will be maintaining the same product on both Windows and Linux?" Or is there even such a thing?

Comments

Re:Metrowerks CodeWarrior

[johnjones]

it sucks as a linux dev because the visual translation layer for X (so it looks the same on all platforms) is horribly broken for linux

very bad hope it improves but I dont hold my breath

regards

john jones

Eclipse

[Ratbert42]

IBM's Eclipse (www.eclipse.org is a possibility but it's more for Java than C++ and it's still fairly new.

Re:Visual SlickEdit

[Whatever Fits]

Visual SlickEdit is a great gui based editor and it has multiple editor modes such as vi, emacs, windows, etc., but it is not a RAD environment as the poster might be wanting. However, VSE is incredibly easy to integrate into other programs and components as it has SlickC, a C like macro language that allows you to do pretty much anything you want to. I have personally used it to interface with an external GUI layout program (written by the company I worked for then), which then allowed the RAD like editing of code "behind the buttons" as well as syntax highlighting and project management for a language that isn't very common (Dibol). This could very easily be done for many different editors and the GUI layout tools giving the user a selection to mix and match their layout tool with their favorite editor. You can import your existing libraries into the autocompletion and construct handling routines. Oh, and tech support at SlickEdit is rather good, too.

look out people who use ISV answers

[johnjones]

dont call yourself an ISV

here is some of my advice(do a google search ;-)(bellow are sane answers)

please try and use the gcc that fits you I recomend a dual gcc2.95 and a dev 3.1.xx or CVS version for intresting results (you will have to use redhats 2.96 if you plan to release to the 7.x as the ABI is differant but they plan 3.x for their 8.x release so it pays to be ahead of the game)

http://anjuta.sourceforge.net is a nice IDE that will help out visual studio freaks it has a GTK interface

http://www.kdevelop.org" is a KDE front end and is more mature and has a QT front end

but seriosly learn vi

this is because it is one of the more comman text editor and WHY because it is VERY good for seraching and writeing documents in plaintext (which I assume is what your C/C++/^*somethinglang%&^ is in)

I have to say writeing to standards helps so try it on solaris and BSD when codeing (three boxs as build machines is not a drain plus people can use these at the same time) all of these are free and run on x86 hardware http://www.sun.com
http://www.netbsd.org

Am I the only one who is ammused by the fact that people think that M$ wont go to linux ?
at the moment this is true but hey server side they have chillisoft doing ASP and the rest is comeing

oh and try out GDB (-;

regards

john jones

Re:Serious question...

[JabberWokky]

I am a developer. KDevelop is very good (the K means it runs under KDE, not that it is just for making KDE apps - it makes command-line, KDE and Gnome apps also). If you develop a Qt App, you can cross-compile for Windows as well. It's also Free in every sense of the word, if that matters to you.

On the commercial side, KDE Studio Gold from the Kompany looks to be even better, and they also have Blackadder for Python and Ruby development if you need that. And language legends Borland are in the process of bringing over most of their modern packages including Delphi (confusingly renamed Kylix), Java and C++. Right now, Kylix is available, with C++ Builder and JBuilder coming in the next few months. Again, as long as you stay away from OS specific API calls (that does for Linux and Windows), you can reuse all objects and source with a simple recompile aimed at either Windows or Linux.

--
Evan

Re:Forte

[andyp]

The problem with Forte is that it is slow as hell. Even on my P3 with a gig of RAM, it's painful.

I think you'll enjoy Anjuta :-)

[andyp]

anjuta.sourceforge.net

I'll admit that I'm biased (! - and who isn't?!) but it is coming along nicely now, and as someone who has to use Windows / Studio at work, I find it quite a comfortable transition. We're still working hard to improve it, it's not there yet (and as a few others have mentioned, KDevelop is probably slightly more "mature" right now, since it has been going longer and may have the larger development team), but the more people use it an propose improvements, the better we can make it.

Re:ISV

[jeff4747]

Independent Software Vendor. Microsoft speak for a company that develops software for Windows.

What language are you currently developing with?

[wrinkledshirt]

Seems like that would be the most important question. Recommending Kylix to a group of people who know nothing about Pascal doesn't seem like such a hot idea, nor does recommending KDevelop to Visual Basic developers...

If you like C++, go with KDevelop.
If you prefer C and can do XML, go with a combination of a good editor, gcc and Glade.
If you like Pascal, go with Kylix.
If you like Java, there's Forte (don't know anything about it).
If you like Visual Basic, get ready to buckle down and learn a new language...
Also, consider giving Emacs a whirl. It's scary as all git, but it does just about everything short of fixing you a sandwhich.

Netbeans is the open source version of Forte

[Walles]

Netbeans is the (SPL) foundation of Forte.

Their FAQ has the following to say about the relationship between Forte and Netbeans:

The Forte for Java product line is based on NetBeans. Forte for Java Community Edition is a productized version of NetBeans and will continue to be free. The relationship between NetBeans and Forte for Java Community Edition is similar to that between Linux and companies such as Red Hat, Caldera, SuSE, Debian, etc. - a productized version of an open source project.

Cheers //Johan

Re:Serious question...

[DeeKayWon]

I believe it stands for Independant Software Vendor.

To answer the question, I may not be a developer, but I have heard good things about KDevelop.

Metrowerks CodeWarrior

[Smitty825]

Although I've never used their products for anything but Mac and Palm development, I've had lots of success with Metrowerks Codewarrior. They have Win32, Mac, Solaris and Linux versions available (...and versions for the PS2, Nintendo 64, etc).

Visual SlickEdit

[netinlet]

Very nice development environment. Runs on linux, solaris, windows, and about half a dozen other platforms. Was not ported to unix as an afterthought. Slickedit definitely helps my productivity. I use it on Linux and on Windows. I am not associated with Microedge, the manufacturer, in any way other than a very satisified customer. http://www.slickedit.com Doug

Re:Visual SlickEdit

[Howie]

I downloaded the slickedit demo for windows after someone mentioned it on the dcdev mailing list. I had high hopes for it - the feature list is impressive! However it is the only editor I've used that I've mananged to crash within 20 minutes, doing ordinary tasks. So I switched back to EditPlus and XEmacs and gave it the heave-ho.

Editors, like OSes and X servers shouldn't crash. Ever. Particularly when they cost at least ten times (or infinitely) more than the editor they replace.

Komodo

[winterstorm]

Komodo from Activestate is very "Visual Studio"-ish and supports PERL, Python, PHP, and a lot more.

You might look at Sun's Forte as well.

jEdit is nice

[Jack Auf]

We've been using jEdit at work for about a year now, and we really like it quite a bit. It's java based, so it can be a tad slow on an under powered box. Many, many languges supported, and a boat-load of plugins.

It's kind of nice to have one IDE for C,Java, and PHP.

I can be found at http://www.jedit.org/