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What Tools Do FLOSS Developers Need?
An anonymous reader writes "I am a free software developer; I maintain one relatively simple project written in C, targeted at end users, but I feel that I could contribute something more to the FLOSS community than my project. Instead of focusing on another project targeted at end users, I thought that I could spend my time working on something FLOSS developers need ('Developers, developers, developers, developers!'). The question is: what more do FLOSS developers need from existing development tools? What would attract new developers to existing FLOSS development tools? Which existing development tools need more attention? I can contribute code in C, Python and bash, but I can also write documentation, do testing and translate to my native language. Any hints?"
If there is one thing FLOSS regularly needs help with, it's documentation.
I give you OpenSSL: One of the most well known libraries, and the documentation is very lacking. How about some better examples? How do I use PSK? How about a quick start guide?
So many projects have this problem: They have "API documentation" which is nothing but a list of what the individual functions do with no indication how they get used together. Or they document functions but not data structures, etc. So if you really want to help, write documentation.
That's fair, but it's also worth keeping in mind that "Fork it if you don't like it" is only better than a closed source product if you have the resources and expertise to fork it. Otherwise, you're just as helpless.
Beyond that, the software that will eventually replace the old DOS-based crap you're talking about will be whatever meets the businesses'/users' needs. If you'd like to see that be your FOSS project rather than a proprietary solution, then paying attention to user requests might be helpful.
If you don't care whether your project gets used... well I guess users have no leverage unless they want to pay you, and maybe not even then.
There's nothing special I've seen in Visual Studio's debugging that couldn't be done with DDD
This must be some new meaning for the word "done" that I have previously been unfamiliar with.
Can you edit and continue when working with C++ or C#?
Making changes on the fly is one of the premium features of Visual Studio and I have never seen it in any other IDE. True I haven't used all of them yet but I've been thru netbeans, eclipse and a few others. The integration of the IDE with the debugger is far more important than the utility of the debugger. I have seen this with python, lua and several interpreted basics but not with C++ or C#.
Why bother
Yes, I'm a Qt Fanboi, but hear me out:
Qt is free (LGPL), multiplatform (support all users), fill-featured and clean.
QtCreator (new) is the Qt IDE, with tons of support and integrated help, including an integrated gdb (or other) debugger.
If you're on Python, then wait a bit for PySide or get PyQt now.
I feel I can move mountains with just one download the sdk
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
IMHO, Eclipse is a great example of what's wrong with Open Source software from a usability perspective -- to be reasonably productive with Eclipse, you probably need a bunch of plug-ins, a bunch of time tweaking the preferences, someone who's spent years using it, and probably all of the above. Possibly you also need twice the memory (or more) of just about any other option to run at a reasonable speed for no apparent reason.
I'm interested in coding; I'm not interested in spending a bunch of time fighting my IDE to do it, and when I think about the years I spent using Eclipse, that's basically what I remember. Other people have a different experience with it and I won't say they're wrong, but that's what it was like for me.