I'm having several headaches trying to work in Eclipse for C++ development.
The IDE persistently shows Errors and Warnings in the Problems pane, even after they have been solved - only a right-click->"Delete" seems to clear them. Even then, a few will pop back up after a compile, which is probably related to the second issue...
My codebase is rather small (two projects, one for unit tests, one for a small library I'm developing), though I do make use of basic C++ templating. However, Eclipse largely fails to code complete for included libraries, files in my own workspace but separate projects, and even occasionally files within the same project.
I've tried rebuilding the index on my projects and fiddled with a few settings, but to no avail. In the past I have used Visual C++, with it's wonderful Intellisense, but I'm running Linux at the moment and want an IDE that can (eventually) handle multiple languages and toolchains - for which Eclipse excels.
I've tried googling but found no real help. Does anyone out there have any hints for tweaking Eclipse CDT for better code completion/analysis? Or is this just the nature of non-Visual Studio development?
Related
Let me preface this by stating I have vision problems so I have to magnify my screen upwards of 400% minimum to read most things including code - even when I am using a dark theme as I do when I code.
QTCreator has an issue where it moves the view on me with most keystrokes & actions - usually to the top left corner by the project file listing. I've posed questions to QT Support and even cloned the source for QT Creator looking to see if I could identify a relatively easy fix - to no avail. So now I'm trying to find a free (as in no financial cost) alternative to QT Creator so I can keep programming using QT Creator in C++.
I've tried Visual Studio Community Edition (2017 and 2019) and had problems getting things to build. It seemed like I had to rebuild the entire framework libraries for MSVC or else it wouldn't work. Additionally it seems it finds compilation errors in even the framework source - which doesn't even look wrong to me or I'd try to repair it.
I tried Eclipse (as I'm a Java engineer for my job so I'm familiar with Eclipse for Java and it does not have the problem that QT Creator has. The QT plugin - when I try to put a simple line of #include - It claims "QApplication" is unresolved. I've looked for this and all the answers say about Project->Properties->Paths and Symbols but as of 2019-12 and 2020-03, there are no options in settings for paths and symbols unfortunately.
A colleague suggested CLion from JetBrains but unfortunately it appears you have to pay for that. I have no intention of paying for a compiler or IDE.
Any thoughts on how I can get around this view changing problem or an alternative to QTCreator that doesn't cost money? If there's a setting in one of the applications I may have missed, suggest it with the version of the appication and I'll look for it and reply if it doesn't exist for whatever reason or accept your answer if it does and fixes the problem.
Thank you!
If you are familiar with Eclipse but have issues with the plugins and you intend using it for C++ I recommend checking out Cevelop (https://www.cevelop.com/) it's basically Eclipse but only for C++ and has some optimizations.
If that doesn't work for you technically you should be able to use any code editor like VSCode or Atom, but I do not know how well that works with the Qt library.
CLion is free for students but I think that doesn't apply for you.
NetBeans (https://netbeans.org/) is also free and cross-platform.
(https://netbeans.org/kb/74/cnd/qt-applications.html)
It should be possible to use Qt within the IDE.
I have several (huge) projects written with CodeGear C++Builder 2007, making use of components, forms/"designs", etc.
Problem: The IDE sucks, especially the lack of proper navigation in the code gets on my nerves. I'm looking for an alternative IDE to use at least for the actual coding (and maybe for forms-design as well) that can read C++Builder projects (.cproj files).
I thought, if any open IDE can do it, its Eclipse... Other alternatives are welcome if you know them. But before I spend too much time trying to figure out how to make that work--- Does anyone have experience with this and can confirm/decline whether I can use Eclipse to work on C++Builder projects?
Yes, Eclipse works as an IDE with C++Builder. I regularly do my coding in Eclipse and use C++Builder for the compiling, form designer, and debugging. (Eclipse should be able to invoke a command-line build of C++Builder and look for errors, but I've never tried this.)
Eclipse doesn't need to be able to read .cbproj files; instead, create an Eclipse project in the same directory as your C++Builder project, manually set up your Eclipse paths and includes to match your C++Builder project, and let Eclipse go from there.
I'm currently using Eclipse Helios, which is rather old. Newer versions of Eclipse CDT improve its ability to parse C++, but unfortunately, this seems to cause it to reject more of C++Builder's C++ extensions. I haven't yet investigated to see how to best handle this.
I am used to Java and Eclipse, as that was what I first programmed with. That said, in Eclipse, when debugging Java, you can make code changes, and save them, while the code is running. The changes to the code will then take effect in the debug window, without a change to your code.
I am wondering if you can do the same thing, or similar with C++. I am currently using Code::Blocks, and I'm wondering if there is a debugging plugin for it that does the same thing, or similar. I know about Edit and Continue in VS, but I would really rather stick with Code::Blocks. Also, I have not programmed C++ in Eclipse yet, and will hot swapping C++ work in Eclipse? Or is that a Java feature?
What you're looking for is a feature of the entire toolchain, including the compiler, linker, loader, and debugger. Visual C++ has this feature because Microsoft has made all its tools work together to support it. Similarly, the same effort has been spent to make Java work this way.
As far as I know, Code::Blocks is just an editor but delegates the compiling and linking to other compilers (without specifically integrating with their features).
Java is JIT compiled (just in time, compiled at runtime) making this feature, perhaps not trivial, but not as significant a challenge as it is to implement in a C++ environment. I've been developing in Visual Studio for 10+ years now, and to be honest, I find edit and continue rather useless.
As to having it in Code::Blocks, gcc would have to support incremental compilation before this was put significantly on the agenda of many C::B users. There was a project to add this functionality, but I'd say at this stage, you're out of luck.
I would like to develop a Windows build of my Android game for testing and demo purposes. Most of my code is C++, using OpenGL to render, with a thin Android/Java layer that forwards touch events and loads resources.
My first thought was to make a Visual Studio project for my Windows version, as I'm familiar with it and the debugger is excellent.
Can I get similar C++ debugging functionality with Eclipse & CDT? It seems tidier to have all versions working from the same IDE, and it would be nice to become less dependant on proprietary software. Would I be able to add a Windows build configuration in CDT, switch over, and have the IDE launch & debug my Windows version instead? Or would I be entering a world of pain setting this up?
Are there any other approaches I haven't considered? All advice welcome!
CDT is a perfectly good Windows development environment. Just make sure that you have installed the Windows SDK.
If the concern is that Visual Studio puts a lot of the Windows-specific code in place for you, you might consider starting a new project in it. I'd avoid MFC. Just create a new Win32 project. Then, you could take that code and use it as the basis for your Eclipse project, folding in the platform-independent code from your original Android game.
You can easily come up with a cross-IDE solution using makefiles. I guess cmake could help you here.
You could try out MPC. It can generate VS solutions or Eclipse CDT projects(and some more). I've been using it at my previous job and it's really neat once you get the hang of it(which shouldn't be very hard). I'm not sure how well does it work in a
cross-compilation environment, as we were using it to build our project on PC for Linux/Windows.
There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to use Eclipse on WIndows as well.
As far as I know though (I haven't used Eclipse for C++ that much), Visual Studio still has the best debugger. (it can also be a good code health check to compile it with more than one compiler). So there may be reasons to go with VS as well.
If you do decide to go with VS for the Windows version, you may want to look into CMake for managing the build system, since it can generate Visual Studio solutions as well as makefiles and pretty much anything else you may need to build.
I am a student who will be using C++ next quarter. I really enjoyed using the Galileo release of Eclipse with Java and I would like to continue using Eclipse for for C++ development.
I am now experimenting with C++ development on Eclipse. I am running Eclipse 3.5 SR2 with CDT 6.02. My operating system is Windows 7 and I have installed MinGW-5.1.6. Version 6.3 of GDB is installed.
I have it compiling and stepping through code. However, I have the suspicion that I'm just crawling along and have yet to "shift the car out of first gear". I've spent about a week poking around on the Web to learn what constitutes and "optimal" C++ Eclipse experience. In particular, I'm interested in round-tripping with UML and unit testing.
My exploration of the Web became an archeological dig. I turned up how-to articles from 2003, alternative MinGW distros, references to plugins, dead-links, more references to plugins, passionate discussions on gdb bugs, and more references to plugins.
I no longer have any idea what might constitute an optimal C++ Eclipse environment. Would members of the community like to weigh-in on what they consider to be the current optimal experience for C++ development using Eclipse?
CDT 7.0 (out now in June) will have a preview of Codan, a static analysis framework for C/C++. It will highlight logic errors for you in "realtime", i.e. without having to wait for compilation. (It doesn't have very many checkers at the moment, but the number is growing, and you can also implement checkers of your own.)
CDT 7.0 also features a new debugger contributed by Nokia (called "EDC"), which allows debugging without relying on 3rd party tools such as gdb. This will also allow debugging of Visual Studio binaries, something which previously has been impossible.
The "Open Type" and "Open Resource" commands of CDT (and JDT also, BTW) is something I always miss when I have to do stuff in Visual Studio. Being able to locate any type by incrementally typing a part of its name is very practical, and Visual Studio has nothing close to it.
Integration with unit-testing is still missing, though. Not sure why that hasn't caught on.
Here is what I ended up with for a C++ development environment on Windows 7.
Compiler & libraries
Nuwen MinGW Distro.
It includes the Boost libraries which are necessary for the unit testing framework.
A big thanks to Stephan T. Lavavej for making this distribution available.
Debugger
The GNU debugger as built for Windows.
I copied the file gdb.exe into my C:\MinGW\bin folder and it worked well.
Thanks for Equation Solution for providing win32 and win64 binaries of the GDB executable.
IDE
Eclipse IDE for C/C++ Developers.
Unit testing framework
CUTE (C++ Automated Unit Testing Easier).
Download the Eclipse plug-in using Eclipse’s software installation . Add this URL to “Available Software Sites”: http://ifs.hsr.ch/cute/updatesite.
The CUTE Website has excellent installation and usage instructions.
I failed to find a round-trip modeling tool that was useful to me. Exploring free UML tools was like wandering through a city that had been bombed. Dozens of projects stood in various states of usability. Some projects were clearly active, some were clearly abandoned, but most were somewhere in between. Visio continues to be my pragmatic choice for creating UML models.
Seeing as none of the C++ gods here on SO have weighed in...
My last experience with CDT was about 1 year ago. I too love eclipse for Java, and while CDT "did the job", I didn't feel like it did it any better than Code::Blocks which I used for cross platform development.
Eclipse does have access to UMLet which is my favorite UML tool as it uses a very simple scripting language instead of the 'mouse-click-drag-double-click-type' hell that most UML applications turn out to be. However, UMLet can also be used as a standalone application which makes tucking it into eclipse accomplish little more than wasting screen real-estate.
In the end, I really don't think you are going to find many professionals developing in CDT.
On the linux side you are going to find developers using what they wish to use (Anjuta, Code::Blocks, Dev-C++, kdeveloper, EMACS, vim, etc.)
On the Windows side you'll find Visual Studio overwhelmingly followed by the IDE's above that happen to be cross platform.
In the end, if I HAD to develop in Eclipse; I would use CDT, UMLet, and Subclipse. After having done that I would probably long for my TortoiseSVN, Visual Studio, Code::Blocks, and UMLet standalone.
As far as any automated unit testing goes? Don't know, write my tests by hand. Hope that helps.