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.
Related
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.
What I need is a small sized IDE+compiler for creating C++ applications that will interact with win32APIs... And It'd be grat for it to be capable of analizing headers I give it for code completion and connecting DLL's (not .Net DLLs but If it'd be capable ofcompiling C++ .NET projects I would just be super-duper glad) to project should be eazy. So I know my requirements are hard. For example for C# I found SharpDevelop but it does not provide C++ capabileties... so Any Ideas, please
Code::Blocks is another one to consider. The binaries for the IDE + the Mingw compiler are only 73 MB compressed. Code::Blocks should be able to do all or most of what you want, though I'm pretty sure it can't do any C++/CLI stuff.
Eclipse IDE for C++ developers comes in at 88MB
direct download
http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/packages/eclipse-ide-cc-developers/heliossr1
The IDE installed is more than 100mb, but it still has a very small footprint after installation...
NetBeans IDE is another possible option.
and it has an even smaller footprint than Eclipse IDE
To quote the FAQ, 'No question is [...] too "newbie"'
What is the best way to set up an Windows system (vista, if that matters) to work with C++?
Preferably with a nice IDE, easy compiling of software (support for make files, etc.), but suitable for a beginner.
I would quite like the IDE to use a relatively portable format, such as makefiles and configure scripts, nothing too proprietary.
I would also like the ability to add new libraries etc. without much hassle, and work with the majority of C++ code others have written.
I am comfortable using the command line.
Thanks for the help, hopefully the question is clear. And apologies if it's already been answered, i did have a look for similar questions.
I know this is not exactly 'nothing to proprietary' but you should give a look at the free Express Edition of Visual C++. Under its covers you'll get all the familiar make and command line tools, but wrapped in a polished IDE.
If you're really comfortable with the command line then you can make an IDE from code editor on top of a compiler/debugger suite. MS's own command line tools come with the platform SDK (free) and you get an awesome debugger in Windbg. My personal favorite code editor is Code Insight. I wish so hard for a Mac version /sigh.
Microsoft's Visual Studio has a free express edition which contains pretty much everything you need to program c++.
For a Gui, the main choices are probably, MFC (old and ugly), CLR/.Net (new and confusing) or look at Qt(now LGPL) or wxWigets
There are quite a few good IDEs for C++ available on Windows.
The de-facto standard for professional software development is Microsoft's Visual Studio, which is available in different versions, like the free Express Editions. This will give you a great tool-chain for Windows development.
However, for a more "cross-platform" approach, you should have a look to the free Eclipse C++ Development Tooling, which is available for many platforms. As long as your own code is platform-independent, the whole project can be shared between Windows, Linux, Mac, etc.
Other alternatives are MinGW or CygWin that both allow to use the GCC toolchain on Windows.
Try the MinGW compiler, it will come with a C and C++ compiler, Make, etc--among many others. This can be used from the command line, pretty easily: g++ -o someprogram.exe somecode.cpp
As for an IDE, there are lots out there. Right now I am using Code::Blocks, and so far it's been really nice. As well, it already supports the GCC compiler, and sets many of the appropriate flags for you, so all you'll really need to do is hit the "build" button.
Some others you might want to try are Eclipse, which is really powerful, but lots of its "power" will be really confusing and difficult to use until you start getting used to it. Visual C++ is another one, which (obviously) would integrate very nicely into Windows. Of course, you could always use emacs :)
I suggest you evaluate CodeBlocks.
Microsoft's Visual Studio is powerful but rather proprietary. If you prefer open/portable stuff, I recommend Dev-C++ and Cygwin.
FWIW, I recently went through this and tried the VC++ Express and QT Creator based stuff. Coming from a linux/unix background I found that QT was a little better since it was using the Ming compilers and some make based constructs.
If you will only be hacking for windows I would go for Visual Studio. It will definitely save you time you can spend on coding instead. Most open source out there for windows either already have VC project, and if they don't it is usually very simple to set one up. And normally they have either make or nmake files for you to build VC compatible libararies to link with.
I have a friend who is trying to make the switch to Linux, but is hung up on the apparent lack of debugging/IDE environments for C++, especially as they relate to template programming. He has been using visual studio for years and is maybe a little spoiled by their awesome IDE. Does anyone have any good suggestions for an environment where he can, under Linux, develop and debug with all of the usual things (Breakpoints, line highlighting for compilation errors, step in/over/out/etc, etc) that he's accustomed to? Thanks!
How about Eclipse + CDT ?
Although many people think of it as a Java IDE, he could try NetBeans. I've used it on Windows for C and C++ development without a problem, and I know NetBeans is supported on Linux, so it would be worth a shot.
It looks like most of the features he wants are included in the C/C++ development toolkit, including integration with GDB, a profiler, and more.
Visual Studio is good, indeed.
On the free side:
Qt Creator is getting quite good too, it's worth a try. There are advantageous by-products coming from the Qt framework:
huge library - not only to build GUI applications but for other domains as well
portability on multiple platforms
A version 1.3 beta is available as a preview of the upcoming release but the current 1.2.1 is already all you need to manage projects.
Eclipse has already been mentioned, it's a very good environment offering many plug-ins (Mylyn, SVN, ...).
MonoDevelop somewhat supports C++ (more and more, I didn't check the latest version).
I've used Eclipse for C/C++ and it's pretty useful. It's also used at ACM ICPC World Finals http://cm.baylor.edu/welcome.icpc
I'd recommand Code::Blocks (but use a nighty build). It can be coupled with gdb to enable step by step debugging and all that stuff.
Not exactly an IDE but SublimeText 2/3 is available on Linux now. There may be a debugger plugin for it too, who knows.
Edit
Here's a gdb plugin for SublimeText
I havn't explored it personally, but Emacs has a C++ development addon that looks very much like a full IDE.
About 7 years ago I used KDevelop that was shipped with KDE. I found it quite good back than, and I hope it also improved with the time. I found it quite comparable to VC++ 6 at this time.
It also contains Qt support, if you are in need for some GUI toolkit.
Depends, Code::Blocks is good, Eclipse is very nice too, but you will need a very good computer. In my opinion the best choice iss gcc, gdb and ViM or Gedit.
My buddies from work use Eclipse + Scons, they also use Valgrind(spelling?) for tracking memory leaks and such.
Many of the IDE features you listed were debugger features. The ddd (Data Display Debugger) debugger is quite a nice GUI wrapper for gdb, allowing graphical representation of data structures, a non-crappy source listing window (ie. unlike the l command of gdb where you don't get context), and also allows you to use any and all native gdb commands directly if desired.
Have a look at CodeLite. It's available for Ubuntu and Fedora out of the box and even for Windows and Mac. So you can have the same IDE on different platforms.
We tried Eclipse and NetBeans but left them due to their huge CPU and memory usage. We have a development server and all the developers connect to it via RDC. Thats why these IDEs miserably failed in our model.
So, we looked for some native IDE. Found CodeBlocks to be very good and super fast. We sort of settled on it but later found CodeLite and liked it better than CodeBlocks.
I just seeing this question after 12+ years. AnyHow I just writing my answer. I personally use Quincy IDE for C and C++ development. it is very lite weight and debugging watch list is very much good and easy to use. I'm just attaching the link to the site. try it.
But you have to install it with wine.
Quincy <-- Click here