It seems that Visual Studio and the tools you can use it is far superior to Eclipse and other Linux-platforms.
So does it make sense to cross-develop for Linux under Visual Studio, as long as the code is much the same?
I assume that you can easily share files.
Of course it depends a lot of what you know and project setup, but for the later, importing to VS might be easier than importing into Eclipse.
This is actually possible, but only if you have the right infrastructure in place on both Windows and Linux (or some other *nix variety). I used to worke for an investment bank where almost all work was done on Windows with VC++ and then moved to Solaris and recompiled. This allowed us to use the far superior (over Solaris) Windows tools. And we are talking of building multi-tier, multi-threaded servers here.
However, in order to get this to work they had put in a massive effort (I would guess about 15 man-years) in terms of senior developer time. And it was kind of worth it because Solaris development tools are pants (but the Linux ones are actually quite good). It's not something you, as an individual developer are going to find particularly easy to do, unless you are writing generic command line utilities. In which case you can do it - I routinely recompile my Windows command-line projects on Linux.
The difficult part, in my opinion, is maintaining the separate build systems. If you start the project using Visual Studio you will be tempted to setup the project using the Visual Studio build system.
Don't do that.
Instead, I recommend trying CMake. Make the build system build using CMake, and then work from that starting point.
If I had to choose between Visual Studio and Emacs, I'd go with Emacs. The fact that Visual Studio seems superior to you is just because you got used to it and don't know how to do your usual workflow using other tools. Eclipse, after all, might not be the best choice for Windows developer to move to Linux. I'd also take a look at Qt Creator.
Related
Currently, we are using MS Visual Studio and .NET to develop out applications on Window. We are in the process of porting the application to other OS (Linux, Android...etc) and want to get rid of MS Visual Studio and .NET stuff (they have been a pain to work with).
Is there any good development platform that you would recommend?
Thanks,
ABS
I would port the Visual Studio's solution/project files to CMake (in the downloads list you can get binaries for Windows and Linux), which allows you to generate project files for different platforms, allowing cross-toolset development. Eg:
On Windows, running CMake would detect Visual Studio and would generate solution and project files accordingly.
On Linux: running CMake would find, for instance, gcc or g++ and would generate makefiles accordingly.
I have not tried it, but for android's NDK there's this: android-cmake
[UPDATE Information on gcc/make for windows]
If you want to drop Visual Studio completely, you can try to set up the gcc/make toolchain for Windows with MinGW - Minimalist GNU for Windows, and port your solution/project files to makefiles.
Moving from Windows to other OS'es may shock you at first, but with time you'll get used to it: You do not need a "platform" or "IDE" per se.
What you will need, is cmake, gcc/g++, a decent text editor and perhaps a debugger frontend.
Optionally you may find ctags useful, Doxygen, an svn repo and a profiler (such as Valgrind/KCachegrind).
I am unaware of how exactly you can port .net stuff to C/C++ (other than re-writing from scratch).
Linux and OSX have many similarities, so porting from one to another should not be that hard. Android is a different story, although C++ for android has become a possibility.
The closest thing to what you are looking for, would probably be Eclipse or Netbeans, but again, the simpler you keep those things, the better IMHO.
As to getting rid of .NET, If your .NET code base is not in managed C++ in its entirety, I would try out Mono/Xamarin with Xamarin Studio IDE first before embarking on a full port of .NET code base to standardized C++.
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 want to write an app in visual studio that will work in linux. It's main function will be to monitor multiple linux systems and provide health and status to the GUI... I.e disk usage, bad drives, network throughput, mysql reads/inserts, ect... Can I cross compile with visual studio 2010?
Should I even bother using visual studio? Or should I bail and use Java or C++ on linux?
Thanks for the help guys, looks like the inevitable is true! I was just looking at netbeans, so I guess I will use that. I don't normally write for Linux, so I will just have to plow through it :)
Thanks
If you like the VS IDE, you can certainly use it to write code that's portable to Linux, though actually compiling the code for Linux will be separate. In theory, you could probably configure VS to compile your code with gcc as a post-build step, for example, but it would probably be more work than it was worth.
At least IMO, if you're trying write code that's portable to Windows and Linux (e.g., using Qt for its UI), and you're comfortable with VS, it's probably worth using VS to do most of the work. If you prefer Linux tools or you're writing the code exclusively for Linux, then you're probably better off using Linux tools throughout.
No; Microsoft Visual Studio does not contain a cross compiler for Linux. Nothing says you cannot use the C++ you build in Visual Studio on Linux machines though; you would just need to compile to code there.
As Visual Studio does neither run on Linux natively nor can it produce native Linux code, I would recommend you use the target platform's native toolchain to build your software.
If your goal is to create a portable application that runs on both Windows and Linux, starting one Windows with Visual Studio and recompiling the code on the Linux system on a regular basis is probably a pretty decent approach.
It is possible to use Visual Studio to develop, but you can't create the Linux executable with it - for that you need to use the gcc compiler under Linux. You'll find a few differences between the compilers that will give you some grief, and unfortunately a lot of those differences will be in the areas you're targeting - O/S services. It's a judgement call which would be easier but in your case I'd bite the bullet and use the Linux tools exclusively.
Bail.
Maybe look into monodevelop which is much less nice than Visual Studio.
Netbeans and/or Eclipse for linux are nice though.
Bail, Visual Studio is definitively not the best tool for this particular job.
If you want to code C++ for GNU/Linux, there are a lot of good IDEs in there: Eclipse, NetBeans, KDevelop, Codeblocks...
Also, check the answers on this question: C++ IDE for Linux?, I think you'll find some useful stuff there.
For what it's worth I've used VS to write code that was supposed to work on Windows and *nix. I'd figure out a configuration method for *nix and as you go before every major commit try compiling the code with gcc. Visual Studio's Intellisense and VC++ debugger murder Eclipse+CDT+gdb in every way.
I'm fairly partial to Qt Creator for my x-platform C++ tasks.
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.
Currently I`m using Visual Studio for writing code in C++. But it seems so weighty that I decided to switch for another one, preferably free, not so strict to system resources (I mean memory, of course) as VS to learn libraries, such as Boost and Qt. What compiler do you suggest?
I'd suggest using Visual Studio's compiler from the command-line. You get the same high-quality compiler, without the resource-hogging IDE.
Although the IDE is pretty good too, and probably worth the resources it uses.
Code::blocks is exactly what you are after. You can can download it here: http://www.codeblocks.org/downloads/5
Choose the version with the mingw compiler bundled with it (Windows port of GCC). You can switch between that and the VC++ compiler as and when you like.
Code::Blocks has all the stuff you want, debugger integration, code completion, class browser, todo list etc. etc. It even import visual C++ projects.
Don't use Dev C++ which has already been recommended. It's very very old and outdated.
If you want to learn unix tools download and install cygwin It's a good set of tools but a full install takes up 5 or 6 gigs because so much is included.
There is always Digital Mars. Also, you can freely download Microsoft WDK
which comes with their C/C++ compiler and command-line build system.
You will be hard-pressed to find an IDE as capable as MS VS. It is incredibly feature-rich.
However, if you just want command line compiling and linking it can do that too.
GCC is also an option.
Please note that you do not need another compiler or IDE to use boost libraries. I wouldn't replace Visual Studio with any other IDE/compiler, at least not on Windows. Installing Cygwin or SUA (better than Cygwin, closer to the Windows Kernel) will only be a pain just for what you are trying to reach.
Try to minimize the memory usage by disabling unnecessary things, keep the amount of open source files small, use an alternative to document explorer to find help (your browser on msdn will do). Besides that, I wouldn't call a few ten megabytes of memory a high usage. As long as it doesn't slow your system down there is not a real issue.
A better idea would be to upgrade your computer rather than to replace something powerful with something that you don't know.
Seriously there is no real alternative to Ms's compiler on Windows. All the others are OK if you can't spring for Visual Studio or if you are just doing hobbyist work. Cygwin can be a pain to deal with.
If you don't want the IDE as someone else suggested just use the command-line compiler.
I've found VS to be quite good for doing Boost + Qt work. Especially if you have the Qt + VS integration tool. You get a GUI designer and respectable Qt project management tools.
If you are looking for a compiler that uses fewer system resources than the MS ones, you'll probably find that most modern compilers that are able to compile a good part of or almost everything in Boost will be quite heavy on system resources, both processor usage and memory consumption. To a certain extent that's just par for the course when it comes to C++.
That said, I do like to have a second compiler around if I'm writing portable code as it's a lot easier to iron out portability issues when you can ensure that the code compiles in different environments. If you want to do all that on Windows, may Cygwin is worth a look. However it does seem that the GCC you get with Cygwin is not exactly what you'd call up to date.
The aforementioned Digital Mars compilers are well worth a look, Walter Bright (the guy behind them) has been writing C++ compilers for a long time and they're pretty good. I have used them off and on since the early nineties and I've always been happy with them. Not to mention that they always seemed noticeably faster than the Microsoft offerings, but I haven't got any recent measurements to back that up.
At the end of the day, most third-party tool vendors on Windows tend to target the MS environment so if you're writing C++ code professionally and need/want tools like leak detectors, you pretty much need to be able to build with the MS compilers, even if they aren't your main development environment.
I sugget , Netbeans.org
NetBeans IDE , download the Cygwin , follow one tutorial from http://www.netbeans.org for C++ confuguration at Netbeans IDE , just 2 steps.. and u are ok
autocomplete (faster than VS')
classes
and all... you want xD
It needs to mention about DevCpp. It is a simple UI wrap for gcc compiler (oh my, it is sounds like a tautology). It provides lightweight IDE but not so stable (so, its IntelliSense is somewhat buggy).
If you use Qt why not use their IDE, QtCreator, there is compiler, debugger and GUI designer. All comes in one nice package and works on Windows, Mac and Linux.
In my opinion it's better than Code::Blocks (also based on MinGW/GCC).