I am considering migrating from eclipse to vim for c++ development- I've recently "rediscovered" Vim, and finally went beyond the basics. I'm loving it, but there are still a few features that I use constantly in Eclipse that I'd also like to see in Vim.
One of them is call hierarchy. It's extremely helpful to know where a particular function/method is called throughout a project, and having an overview at a glance. Is there a similar plugin for that in Vim? Perhaps a combination of plugins/commands that are equivalent?
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/149558/recommended-vim-plugins-for-c-coding
A combination of the cscope and taglist plugins (linked from above) should give you what you want. Possibly cctree. All of these have problems with templates, however.
Also check out eclim
Eclipse has a built-in C++ parser that runs in the background and fully parses and semantically analyzes C++ code. This is what allows it to provide code completion, call hierarchy, refactoring and similar features.
I'm not aware of anything like that being available for vim. If someone knows something like that, I would be interested too.
Related
I am looking for a good tool that can automatically convert c++ naming styles, such as change method name from "SetPosition()" to "setPosition()", and class name "CPoint" to "Point". Seems most of formatters have no such feature. Thanks.
You can manipulate C++ source using Clang, although you might have to write a bit of code to do the conversion that you have in mind.
For example, the Clang infrastructure would allow you to write a program that iterates over all class method names in a given source file. You could then programatically convert any pascal-case method names that you encounter into camel-case names.
Code formatters don't do renaming of functions. What you need is a refactoring tool that can perform rename. If your project isn't very big then Devexpress Refactor! for C++ (free) might be of help. It will involve some manual work, but it'll be safer than search and replace. Qt Creator has a rename reporting built in an I have found it to be quite reliable (hasn't messed up so far unlike some dedicated refactoring tools).
If manual work using refactoring tools is too much then you can use clangs pieces to build a tool that performs the refactorings automatically, but this is probably more work than the semi-manual process with refactoring tools.
I'm working with some Objective-C++ code (.mm files), and I'm curious if it's possible to get emacs to use proper syntax highlighting for both the Objective-C parts and the C++ parts. objc-mode and c++-mode are both major modes (built on top of cc-mode), so they can't be used at the same time.
Are there any minor modes or elisp hacks available to enable both Objective-C and C++ syntax highlighting at the same time?
I have not done this myself, but since all those modes are based around cc-mode it seems as though you could get the source code for objc-mode styles and c++-mode and combine them.
Another possibility would be to try out an alternate objc-mode that it supposed to be more advanced, perhaps it would better take c++ into account:
http://www.foldr.org/~michaelw/objective-c/
(scroll to the end and look for obj-c-mode.el)
Here's a page that has information about running multiple major modes. As far as I know it's mostly used for doing web-type stuff where you might have several different languages in a single document, but It could probably work for others as well.
I recently switched to Emacs and still finding my way through it.
I code in C++ and was wondering what tools out there extend Emacs to support code browsing (finding a symbol etc), refactoring and code completion.
I have heard of:
cedet
etags
cscope
But I'm so confused about what I need. Some places say that cedet provides all of the functionality but other places say that I need to invoke etags for cedet to work properly.
Can someone clear this up for me? Do I need all of these tools?
Maybe you will find my article about Cedet useful. Cedet has support for etags, gtags, cscope and other tools.
But refactoring is missing. You may need to look into the Xrefactory tool (but it isn't free)
Cscope is very good as "find symbol" usage tool. It is very fast.
Etags will show you your class hierarchy and will help you to find method definition/declaration.
So these two tools are must have and they are independent.
Cedet. It is kind of replacement of these two tools above with additional features. So your choice either cscope/etags or cedet.
For refactoring, I started using emacs exclusively for this and related tasks after I read this article by emacs hacker Xah Lee.
For autocompletion, see this SO post. Personally, I've found yasnippet very helpful throughout the years.
gtags (http://www.gnu.org/software/global/) is also available and perhaps simpler to use.
Personally, I don't like cedet. It makes Emacs take an hour to load. The auto-complete feature has never worked quite right with me. I don't need its project-management nor its UML features.
The only thing I miss about it is the Emacs Code Browser, which is very useful but requires cedet
I would advice you to just use cscope and etags and see how you like them. You can install cedet later once you're more familiar with emacs.
I wrote a blog article about using Global/gtags and Speedbar for code browsing you might find useful... (I also thought CEDET was a bit slow... and extremely complicated to set up =)
When programming in C++ in Visual Studio 2008, why is there no functionality like that seen in the refactor menu when using C#?
I use Rename constantly and you really miss it when it's not there. I'm sure you can get plugins that offer this, but why isn't it integrated in to the IDE when using C++? Is this due to some gotcha in the way that C++ must be parsed?
The syntax and semantics of C++ make it incredibly difficult to correctly implement refactoring functionality. It's possible to implement something relatively simple to cover 90% of the cases, but in the remaining 10% of cases that simple solution will horribly break your code by changing things you never wanted to change.
Read http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/defective.html#defect-8 for a brief discussion of the difficulties that any refactoring code in C++ has to deal with.
Microsoft has evidently decided to punt on this particular feature for C++, leaving it up to third-party developers to do what they can.
I'm not sure why it is like this, but third-party tools exist that help. For example, right now I'm evaluating Visual Assist X (by Whole Tomato). We're also using Visual Studio 2005.
devexpress provides Add-in Refactor! for C++ for VS2005 and VS2008.
Don't feel hard-done-by, it isn't available in VB.Net either :)
C++ is a HARD language to parse compared with C# (VB too unless you've "Option Explicit" and "Option Strict" switched on, it's difficult to tell exactly what any line of code is doing out of a MUCH larger context).
At a guess it could have something to do with the "difficulty" of providing it.
P.S. I marked my answer as community wiki because I know it's not providing any useful information.
Eclipse does few c++ refactorings including 'rename'. Check out this question here on StackOverflow.
It is also possible to use Microsoft compiler with Eclipse. Check out here.
Try Eclipse and see if it fits for you.
There is a lot of fud and confusion around this issue. This amazing youtube video should clear up why C++ refactoring is hard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVbDzTM21BQ
tl;dr Google refactors their entire 100 million line C++ codebase by using a compiler (Clang + LLVM) that allows access to its intermediate format.
Bottom line, third parties are screwed here, there is no realistic way for them to refactor VS C++ unless MS outputs intermediate results the same way. If you think of it from the programming problem perspective this is obvious: in order to refactor VS C++ you have to be able to compile C++ the exact same way VS does with the same bugs, limitations, flaws, hacks, shortcuts, workarounds, etc. The usual suspects like Coderush and Resharper do not have the budget for that kind of insanity although apparently they are trying but it has been years...
http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper-cpp/
Update 2016: Resharper now does a decent job at C++ refactor. Limitations are purely for large / gigantic projects.
MS has finally done this: https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/C9-GoingNative/GoingNative-33-C-Refactoring-in-Visual-Studio-2015#time=04m37s
They have started doing this about 10 years ago, I remember watching ms channel9 long ago.
I've been using Visual Assist X with visual studio for about one year and a half. It's an incredible tool that helps you a lot with ordinary C++ code, but it doesn't perform very well on templated code. For instance, you if have a sophisticated policy-based template design, it won't know how to rename your variables, and the project won't compile anymore.
Install plugin which enables you that functionality: https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/164904b2-3b47-417f-9b6b-fdd35757d194
I'd like to point out that Qt Creator (a C++ IDE which is compatible with VC++ libraries and build system) provides symbol renaming that works very well:
You can rename symbols in all files in a project. When you rename a class, you can also change filenames that match the class name.
Qt Creator - Refactoring: Renaming Symbols
Qt Creator's rename functionality gives you a list of the symbol references it found and an opportunity to exclude any of them before performing the replace. So if it gets a symbol reference wrong, you can exclude it.
So C++ symbol renaming is possible. Coming to VS from Qt Creator I feel your pain, to the point where I've considered converting preexisting VS projects of considerable size to use Qt Creator instead.
I don't buy the argument that this is specifically hard in C++. In addition to the fact that it already works very well in Qt Creator, there's the fact that the compiler and linker can find and match symbols: If that wasn't possible you couldn't build your application.
In fact, languages like Python that are dynamically typed also have renaming tools. If you can create such a tool for a language where there are no explicit references to variable type you can definitely do it for C++.
Case in point:
... Rope, a python refactoring library... I tried it for a few renames, and that definitely worked as expected.
Stack Overflow - What refactoring tools do you use for Python?
Well in spite of comments by all you experts I totally disagree that refactoring support issue has something to do with C++ language semantics or any language semantics for that matter. Except the compiler builder themselves don't choose to implement one in first case due to their own reasons or constraints whatsoever they maybe.
And offense not to be taken but I am sorry to say Mr jsb the above link you provided to support your case (i.e of yosefk) about C++ defect is totally out of question. Its more like you providing direction to "Los angeles" when someone asked for of "San Franisco".
In my opinion raising refactoring difficulty issue for certain language is more like raising a finger on language integrity itself. Especially for languages which is sometimes just pain.... when it comes to their variable declaration and use. :) Okay! tell me how come you loose track of some node within a node tree ... eh? So what it is do with any language be it as simple as machine level code. You know you VS compiler can easily detect if some variable or routine is dead code. Got my point?
About developing third party tool. I think compiler vendors can implement it far more easily and effectively if they ever wanted to then a third party tool which will have to duplicate all the parsing database to handle it. Nowadays compiler can optimize code very efficiently at machine code level and I am hearing here that its difficult to tell how some variable is used previously. You haven't paid any real attention to inner working of compiler I suppose. What database it keep within.
And sure its the almost same database that IDE use for all such similar purposes. In previous time compiler were just a separate entity and IDE just a Text Editor with some specialization but as times goes by the gap between compiler and IDE Editor become less and its directly started working on similar parsed database. Which makes it possible to handle all those intellisense and refactoring or other syntax related issues more effectively. With all precompile things and JIT compiling this gap is almost negligent. So it almost make sense to use same database for both purpose or else your memory demand go higher due to duplication.
You all are programmers - I am not! And you guys seems to be having difficulty visualizing how refactoring can be implemented for C++ or any language that I can't comprehend. Its just all about for something you have to put more effort for some less depending on how heavy is a person you trying push.
Anyway way VS a nice IDE especially when it comes to C#.
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I'm looking for a good IDE for C++ that has most or all of the following properties (well, the first 4 or 5 ones are mandatory):
cross-platform (at least Mac, Linux)
of course, syntax highlighting and other basic coding editor functionality
reasonably responsive GUI, not too sluggish on mid-size (say, 100 files) projects (both my Linux and Mac computers are 5 years old)
code completion
integration with gdb
SVN integration would be nice too
refactoring (rename a variable semi-automatically throughout the codebase, etc.)
can display class hierarchy
can add hypertext-style links to the code (so you can click on a function/class name and it brings you to the declaration),
can show code parts that (potentially) call my function (I know that's hard to do for C++ so I added the potentially)
So far, I've been using Emacs for everything, but I think advanced features that give me more overview and search capabilities like the last three would be nice. I'm tired of just using grep and find on my codebase.
Basically, I want most of the things for C++ development that Java IDEs usually do.
I see Netbeans can be used for C++, as well as Eclipse. I think they would fit my requirements. Has anyone actually used them for daily coding? What are the differences? What are your experiences? Code::Blocks is more lightweight and doesn't do many of the things listed above, right?
Note: I don't need a GUI builder.
Update: With the bullet point 10 I mean that I can give it a function name (e.g. Foo::setValue), and it shows me all occurrences where this particular function (and not other functions of the same name, like Bar::setValue) is called in my codebase.
Code::Blocks does the first 5 and it's also got class method browsing (though not a heirarchy display). It's a much more lightweight solition thaen Eclipse or NetBeans, but if you like the minimalist approach it's pretty good.
To summarise CB versus your requirements:
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No - but you can add it easily
No
No, but similar functionality
No
Can go from definition to decl and vice versa, but no callers list
As all the solutions you mention are free, you could always try them all and then make a decision on which one to stick with. That's what I did.
In addition to the ones mentioned, there's QTCreator, which has "Rapid code navigation tools" though I've not used it.
I think though that the non-essential requirements aren't so good, you can easily see where a method is being called using search! (of course, if you have a huge class hierarchy where every class has the same named method, you've only yourself to blame :) if you havn't laid your classes out in an easily understandable way)
I'd recomend Netbeans, in 6.5, its pretty fast IDE and offers all 10 of your requirements.
I recently asked this same question. I ended up choosing Eclipse with the CDT plugin and the Cygwin libraries. I've been pretty happy with it, except I haven't quite got the hang of the debugger. The window for walking through source on the debug perspective is pretty small, for some reason I haven't figured out how to see into arrays, and I think I knocked out one of the windows for displaying variables and don't know how to get it back. I've ended up abandoning the debugger perspective and just walk through debugs in the normal perspective.
Also, I use Eclipse for Java, so the helped minimize the learning curve. It can do refactoring and you can integrate svn.
Java based IDEs (Netbeans and Eclipse) are sometimes somewhat slow. Also their main focus is Java. One problem with Eclipse is that it is difficult to use for small screens, such as in laptops. I prefer to work usually in vim + ctags (to perform the functions of grep and find), and when I have some advanced operations like comparing two directory hierarchies, I use Eclipse. I've not used Code::Blocks much, but I hear good things about it.
Coming from Emacs, I think you'd prefer something lightweight and not heavy-weight. I would consider Code::Blocks then as a good candidate for exploration.
codeblocks is open source !!
http://www.codeblocks.org/
Go for Eclipse. If you have a decent computer, it is fast enough and has best possibilities with its plug-ins.
codeblocks have a lot of features just check them up !
and it is free !
If you already know Emacs, it may be easier to just start using a few more packages, than learn a whole new IDE.
For example, you can easily do #9 with Emacs: just run tags once and then M-. RET anywhere.
You also have to weigh the IDE's features against what you lose. For example, most IDEs don't tend to have Emacs' easy macro capabilities or numeric prefixes, which are often like a more general form of refactoring.
It is not only the IDE that matters - you would probably need to be able to build you application outside of the IDE (i.e. continuous integration).
Consider using CMake to create a cross-platform description of your build scripts. Once you have the CMake Script (which is straightforward) you can generate from it project files for the IDE of your choice - eclipse, kdevelop, Visual Studio, codeblocks, etc.
I would suggest using eclipse as an IDE. There are few options of how to use CMake with eclipse. Play around, and find the best for you.
Once more - CMake is not only cross-platform it is also cross-IDE. And CMake scripts are very readable, a simple make file would look like this:
project(hello)
add_executable(hello hello.cpp)
Now compare that with makefiles, or setting up a project in your favorite IDE!
My two cents (in no particular order ... and not all these options are c++):
Qt ... my first productive GUI building framework
Lazarus ... what a cool name, and very productive tool (not c++ though)
MonoDevelop ... I'm falling in love with c# development (very much like c++)
Java ... ubiquitous ( a bit like c++)
CHEERS!
Sublime Text Editor is the best cross platform editor so far I have seen. Try using it http://www.sublimetext.com/. It comes with unlimited demo period without suppressing any of its functionality. But if you are satisfied with that, please buy and use it to credit the author.