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What is the Ultimate Linux Development Environment?
nachmore asks: "I've been programming on Linux for a while now, always content to use vi for my editing and any debugger tools out there (gdb for C/C++, and so forth). As part of my SoC project I was working on Thunderbird (my first huge project on Linux) and I found that , although shell-based tools can do the job, they lack in easy project management, ease of debugging and other development features. I've only ever programmed with a GUI on Windows — and I have to admit that I find Dev Studio to be one of the few programs that Microsoft seems to have gotten (nearly) right. I've played around with Eclipse but find it's C/C++ support still lacking. So what GUIs would you recommend for Linux? I would like something with debugging (single step, step through, step-to-end, etc) support, CVS access and of course, support for large projects (e.g. Mozilla) and especially good support for C/C++. Is there anything really good out there, or is vi the way to go?"
I use Visual SlickEdit 10 for Linux. http://www.slickedit.com/ This piece of software is the most configurable IDE I've ever used; it's a tad on the expensive side, but everything just works and it was worth it for me.
Or xemacs if you prefer. I work on a large software system written in C++ and runs on various unixes (Solaris, Linux, SGI) and attempts to run on Windows (Windows usually doesn't agree with it). The system has thousands of source files and is built with make (the Makefiles are generated with imake!). Generally, I use xemacs to for editing. I love vi, but I tend to use (x)emacs because I find the buffer management (the ability to open multiple files) better than in vim. It's entirely possible I just don't know how to use vim right (vim's buffers seem to require that I save the file before switching to another buffer).
Emacs also offers easy access to our source control system (by corporate mandate, we use ClearCase, which I do not recommend to anyone wishing to maintain their sanity).
Finally, emacs allows me to open two (or more) windows in the same session. I generally put two windows next to each other so I can edit two files at once. This lets me open up files as I need them in either window, and then switch to that buffer in the other window if I need to get to it later.
Even though I consider myself a vi person, I've found emacs to be a very good environment for editing source files. It is very customizable and powerful. It adapts to how you want to use it (other people use it in vastly different ways), and generally gets out of your way to let you get your work done.
Just my opinion.
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I believe the GNOME equivalent is Anjuta, which has a lot of the features the OP was asking for. I haven't really used it myself so I can't really say. As you note for KDE developers, my understanding that a lot of GNOME devs just use Emacs. Still, if you want something with a nice GUI then Anjuta looks decent (choice of GTK theme used for screenshots not withstanding).
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I am a joe fan, just a simple console editor and nothing else. I tried Emacs, and I liked it.
Now I'm using Eclipse for Java, and once you understand how it works, there's just too much to gain from it.
I don't browse the code, I navigate it. I don't navigate to files, I search for them. Go to declaration, forward and back editor navigation, automatic javadoc, automatic class and member creation, method extracting (yay!) are all features that, when combined, make an IDE that actually helps you build better code, faster.
Of course an IDE does get in your way, but Eclipse gives so much that it's worth it.
Debuggin with eclipse is great, it's the first debugger I'm actually using and liking since turbo pascal 5.5! (the VB6 debugger, I didn't enjoy that much)
I understand that CDT doesn't have as many features as the java stuff, but I think that going to Eclipse would be a good investment for anyone. You just need to adapt to it, and discovering features is not that difficult, you can start by printing a cheatsheet.
I'm sure emacs can do most of this stuff too, and way faster, but it does take more commitment.
Surprisngly, Netbeans has a really good C++ plugin. After many hassles and much searching for a good IDE, I have found that KDeveop is ok. Eclipse is decent at best. Anjuta tries to generate too much code. Currently, Netbeans works the best for me. It doesn't try to generate code, it has some intellisense features (if you liked that in M$ VS), and you can use a free collaboration account on sun's collaboration server, which can be very useful.
Emacs or Vi is really nice for development, but neither of them are an IDE.
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Yeah, the other day I went to try out KDevelop. Worst IDE I have ever tried...ever.
I was trying to create a project, I chose my folder I wanted it in. KDevelop then proceded to tell me that the folder didn't exist (I'ts supposed to create it from what I gathered). I tried createing the folder before I started the project wizard. No luck, it whined about the folder existing. I then decided to RTFM before I asked about it. Unfortunetely the manual consists of a few descriptions of what menu options do, and nothing to do with actually using it :P.
Once I finally got my project created I attempted to checkout my svn repo...nothing, not even an error. Its like the code for that part was empty 0.o.
Maybe the arch linux build is just fscked, but I dont like it :P
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As my anonymous peer just remarked, it's "in there" as a feature, supposedly, but it doesn't work (most of the time) in the CDT. This is something the CDT guys fully acknowledge and hope to resolve in future releases of the CDT. (Remember, Eclipse's magic tricks are much easier in Java than in C, thanks to bytecode introspection.)
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I agree, on Linux, I haven't seen anything better than Anjuta. I don't program GUIs however, I usualy create network applications.
KDevelop really annoyed me a lot, it was unusable for me.
Eclipse is great for java, but for C or C++ it really let me down.
Anjuta isn't perfect (but no other IDE I've ever seen is anyway), but overall it does most of what I want perfectly.
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Wish I'd looked at the Eclipse documentation more closely before posting... there's some fun gotchas buried in the EclipseCon 2006 CDT PowerPoint Presentation available on the Wiki. Here's some delightful reminders of what's wrong with the CDT:
"Turn off Build Automatically" -- In Eclipse/Java, you'd never need to tell someone to do this, even in the largest of projects, because the build runs quickly and incrementally (using the built-in Eclipse Java compiler). But in CDT, the only way to build is to run your entire toolchain using a Makefile. (So instead of fixing this, they provide features to auto-generate the Makefile!)
"The CDT full indexer is very expensive on large C++ projects (Recommendation: Don't use it on such projects)" Gee, thanks! That's the thing that makes Eclipse (in Java) so Eclipse-y, you know? So make sure you turn that off on large projects.
Oh, and there's my personal favorite FAQ: Can I debug Java and C++ at the same time? Answer? "If you can get this to work, please let the cdt-dev mailing list know!"
The Eclipse CDT is a joke. Even Visual Studio can handle reference searches on large projects.
When I moderate, I only use "-1, Overrated". That way, I never get meta-moderated!
If you think the Visual Studio is a good environment there is no hope for you.
Stuff your arrogance where the sun doesn't shine.
I for one have been using Visual Studio for more than six years. I used 6, 7 and 8. 6 IS crap, yes. But the rest of your posting radiates ignorance. The typical UNIX way (make/emacs/vi/shell) is not The Way To Enlightenment. I don't use VS for code generation, I use it because it automates stuff I just don't want to handle all the time. Building? One click. Debugging? MUCH easier than with gdb. Quick overview & access to all files? Done.
I do develop for Linux, too, and it constantly bugs me that I have to switch to the shell, type make/scons/whatever, see the error output, switch back to the editor, look for the file in the file requester, open it, switch back to see the exact error, switch back to the editor.... vi and emacs are damn confusing, gvim is ok, but doesn't have a file overview panel like VS has. My favourite editors in Linux are kate, nedit and gedit, but none of them have all helpful tools VS has. Oh, and then there is gdb. Debugging multithreaded stuff with gdb - yeah right. gdb often simply misses breakpoints, does not find the source (even when I specified the exact path in the source command), watching variables is unnecessarily difficult etc. gdb is an absolute nightmare to use. ddd is better, kdbg is best, but debugging is one of the things where an IDE shines: since it has knowledge about the overall project structure and the files it consists of, debugging can be much easier. Then there are additional benefits, like refactoring tools (mostly in Java IDEs though - see IDEA).
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MMmm I dont know why I did not see anyone mention Code Blocks. I have been following the development and it is quite good. It is cross platform and open source.
Although they have been in 1.0rc2 for quite some time, they make nightly bulds which are very good.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Absolutely -- that and Excel.
I strongly disagree. I've been using every version of visual studio professionaly since version 6 (and I used v5 at school), and it's been a complete pain in the ass through the years. It used to do things that others IDE didn't do, so at some point most of its crappiness was tolerable.
But nowadays, this thing is unacceptable.
Vs2003 was almost ok and seemed to have the potential to turn into something acceptable.
Plenty of things were wrong or even a complete pain in the ass already: the project settings dialog, the configuration system, the inflexible build system which mysteriously failed to rebuild things on a regular basis, the mysterious and annoying separation of file system hierarchy and project hierarchy, the irritating and random hanging for dozen of secodns at time of the whole thing for no apparent reason, the tiny, cramped and not resizable dialogs...
Then vs2005 came along.
This thing is a monstrosity. It didn't fix anything that I had a problem with in vs2003. Instead, it became more slow, badly architectured and is a total shrine of mediocrity.
It spam refresh the project list tree for dozens of seconds at a time for no reason. Close multiple tabs and watch as it pointlessly waste its time (and yours) refreshing the display after closing each tab.
The project configuration dialog is a complete joke which tend to overwrite the wrong project settings for no reason.
Watch it randomly remove projects from the solution from times to time.
Create a file, add it to the project, and it chokes and crash.
Try to rebuild the project or just even run it, wait for 30 seconds for that clusterfuck of an ide to figure out that nothing should be built. Not that it ever gets it right if a lot of stuff were updated in your last version control update, anyway.
Scalability is horrendous.
And of course, they still haven't figured out how how to make resizable dialogs. The did figure out how to add gradients in the toolbars, though. Thanks for this awesome usability improvement guys.
Oh, I almost forgot that they decided arbitrarily to not provide you with redistributable debug version of the runtime libraries. Since I'm working on an internal production application with an hopelessly convoluted setup procedure, I really enjoy not being able to run a debug version on a user's machine to help me troubleshoot some issues. Development tools are supposed to make the developer's life easier, not to create gratuitous inconveniences.
I use thing thing 8 hours per day. I hate it with a passion.
And it's not like it's cheap either.
It's definitely improved. Good "IntelliSense" like funtionality in the editor, expand/collapse scopes in code, gdb and Valgrind properly integrated, nice class browser, nice build manager... all in all there's not much I don't like about KDevelop these days. I don't think I've ever had much need for the manual so I couldn't comment on that. What do you mean exactly by "grouping" source files?
> The Eclipse CDT is a joke
Unfortunately, I have to agree. I use Eclipse on some C++ projects, simply because I like the GUI, project file tree (Emacs gets very annoying across larger source trees), and CVS integration. However, I've had to turn off most of CDT's features because they are just too damn painful. Every time I try to do something that would trigger an auto-complete drop-down, the system strains and stalls for a while before it maybe gives me an accurate list of choices. I also had to stop building from within Eclipse, since my project used makefiles that generated absurly long command lines (lots of stuff to include/link). These got trunkated in Eclipse and bombed out, but worked just fine in a shell window.
Of course in Java-land, Eclipse is wonderful. It may feel a bit less polished than NetBeans, but IMHO beats it on some useful features (like while-you-code error checking across files).