C++, Eclipse CDT code analysis? - c++

Are there any good plugins for static code analysis for Eclipse CDT?
I found two so far:
Cppcheck plugin, but this still needs the original cppcheck executable
CppChecker, but this didn't work (it didn't do anything)
Are there any more that are better? Or how do I get CppChecker to do something (or is it a static code analyiser at all? the website is not clear at all)?

There is another called "Codan," stands for CODe ANalysis.
It can be reviewed at this wiki, with links to the tool:
http://wiki.eclipse.org/CDT/designs/StaticAnalysis
I cannot answer whether this is the better than your list, but at least it's another option you can review. Eclipse integration seems to be its only requirement.
Keep in mind that this is a work in progress, but given its goals, it may suit your short-term needs.

You can always run lint inside Eclipse as well. I wrote up a blog entry on doing it manually. However, there also exists Visual Lint and it works in VS and Eclipse. It's not perfect but it's easier than setting it all up manually.

I suggest a free plugin based on Codan framework called Artemis. You can get it from ecliplse marketplace. There are other checkers but only plugins integrated into Codan, like this one, can perform real-time analysis in Eclipse.

Related

Plugin Development for Kdevelop

I really love programming in kdevelop4, however it`s quite lacking in language support and other issues, so i would like to developing extension for it.
however .... i thought i would start with an easy plugin but it seems there is no actual documentation about it(not even a good in code comment)
just an example that i can seem to get working....( it compiles fine it just does appear where it should in kdevelop4)
does anyone know about good documentation on this subject?
or if you made a plugin for kdevelop can you tell me what in short need to be done ?
Check that the plugin has been installed to a path in your KDEDIRS env variable, and run kbuildsyscocoa4.

Is anyone actually successfully using MSTest across the team?

I've been using MSTest so far for my unit-tests, and found that it would sometimes randomly break my builds for no reason. The builds would fail in VS but compile fine in MSBuild - with error like 'option strict does not allow IFoo to cast to type IFoo'. I believe I have finally fixed it, but after the bug coming back and struggling to make it go away again, and little help from MS, it left a bad taste in my mouth. I also noticed when looking at this forum and other blogs and such, that most people are using NUnit, xUnit, or MBUnit.. We are on VS2008 at work BTW.. So now I am looking to explore other options..
I'm working on moving our team to start doing TDD and real unit testing and have some training planned, but first would like to come up with a set of standard tools & best practices. To this end I've been looking online to come up with the right infrastructure for both a build server and dev machines...I was looking at the typemock website as I've heard great things about their mocking framework, and noticed that it seems like they promote MSTest, and even have some links of people moving TO MSTest from NUnit..
This is making me re-think my decision.. so I guess I'm asking - is anyone using MSTest as part of their TDD infrastructure? Any known limitiations it has, if I want to integrate with a build / CI server, or code coverage or any other kind of TDD tool I may need? I did search these forums and mostly find people comparing the 3rd party frameworks to eachother and not even giving MSTest much of a chance... Is there a good reason why.. ?
Thanks for the advice
EDIT: Thanks to the replies in this thread, I've confirmed MSTest works for my purposes and integreated gracefully with CI tools and build servers.
But does anyone have any experience with FinalBuilder?? This is the tool that I'd like us to use for the build scripts to prevent having to write a ton of XML compared to other build tools. Any limitiations here that I should be aware of before committing to MS Test?
I should also note - we are using VSS =(. I'm hoping we can ax this soon - hopefully as part of, maybe even the first step, of setting up all of this infrastructure.
At Safewhere we currently use MSTest for TDD, and it works out okay.
Personally, I love the IDE integration, but dislike the API. If it ever becomes possible to integrate xUnit.NET with the VS test runner, we will migrate very soon thereafter.
At least with TFS, MSTest works pretty well as part of our CI.
All in all I find that MSTest works adequately for me, but I don't cling to it.
If you are evaluating mock libraries, take a look at this comparison.
I've been using MS Test since VS 2008 came out, but I haven't managed to strong-arm anything like TDD or CI here at work, although I've messed with Cruise Control a little in an attempt to build a CI server on my local box.
In general I've found MS Test to be pretty decent for testing locally, but there are some pain points for institutional use.
First, MS Test adds quite a few things that probably don't belong in source control. The .VSMDI files are particularly annoying; just running MS Test creates anywhere from 1 to 5 of them and adds them to the solution file. Which means churn on your .SLN in source control, and churn of that sort is bad.
I understand the supposed point behind these extra files -- tracking test run history and such -- but I don't find them particularly useful for anything but a single developer. You should use your build service and CI for that sort of thing!
Second, you either must have Team Foundation Server to run your unit tests as part of CI, or you have to have a copy of Visual Studio installed on your build server if you use, for example, Cruise Control.NET. See this Stack Overflow question for details.
In general, there's nothing wrong with MS Test. But going CI will not be as smooth as it could be.
I have been using MSTest very successfully in our company. We are currently setting up standardised build processes within our company and so far, we have had good success with TeamCity. For Continuous integration, we use out the box TeamCity configurations. For the actual release builds, we set up large msbuild scripts that automate the entire process.
I really like mstest because of the IDE integration and also that all our devs automatically can use it without installing any 3rd party dependencies. I would not recommend switching just because of the problem you are experiencing. I have come full circle, where we went over to nunit and then came back again. These frameworks are all the same at the end of the day so pick the one that is easiest for most your devs to get access to and start using.
What I suspect your problem might be... sounds like an obscure problem I have had before where incorrect references of dll's (eg: adding explicit references (via browse) to projects in your solution, and not using the project reference) leads to out-of-date problems that only come up after clean checkouts or builds.
The other really suspect issue that I have found before is if you have some visual component or control that has a public property of some custom type that is being serialised in the forms .resx file. I typically need to flag them with an attribute that says SerializationVisibility.Hidden. This means that the IDE will not try to generate setters for the property value (which is typically some object graph). Just a thought. Could be way out.
I trust the tools and they don't really lie about there being a genuine problem. They only misrepresent them or report them as something completely obscure. It sounds to me like you have this. I suspect this because the error message doesn't make sense if all is in order, but it does make sense if some piece of code has loaded up an out of date or modified version of the dll at that point.
I have successfully deployed several FinalBuilder installations and the customers have been very happy with the outcome. I can highly recommend it.

Spell checker for comments, strings, maybe more

I am looking for a spell checker for c++ source code. Unfortunately all I can find is Visual Studio specific. I would like something which works on Linux.
Edit:
Ultimately I want to automate it in some way. I am not very proficient in spell checking, but what I am thinking of is a not-interactive console tool which prints error messages, or something like that.
Personally I use vim, but not everyone on the project does of course.
Currently we are using svn so it is possible to integrate it into the pre-commit-hook maybe?
Don't you guys do something similar?
Eclipse (Java based so will do mac, linux etc.) has spellcheckers built in. With the CDT plugin you can edit and build C++ code.
Vim also supports spell checking.
See the other question for more.
Emacs too has spell checking, flyspell-prog-mode, is the one I use, it is a (very!) personal preference which one works best for you.
The automating the spell check idea is a much trickier one. The best you can hope for is one that will tell you if there are spelling errors. That's trickier than it sounds, especially with code comments which may have all sorts of valid abbreviations which are not real words.
Having a company policy that whatever people have their EDITOR environment variable set to has a spell check enabled, should cut down on the spelling errors in commit messages, for example.
I found something!
svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/quality/krazy2 krazy2
this is part of the quality management of KDE.
Besides a multitude of checks (KDE-specific, qt-specific, cpp-specific, ...) there is automated spell checking.
hope this helps
Which editors do you use? Many of them have spell checking abilities. E.g., gedit just needs to have the spellcheck plugin enabled.
You can check out some alpha code I just whipped up for a similar purpose: pyspellcode. It's Zlib licensed and uses clang and hunspell.
No idea how pyspellcode compares to what KDE does/provides but am happy to receive comparisons and will prioritize its development more if there's interest it.
At just over 200 lines, I'm guessing pyspellcode is at least lighter weight than KDE's solution though KDE's solution I imagine is way more tested.

Do you use VIM/Emacs/Terminals to develop C/C++? What kind of projects is this practical for?

For those who are using vim/emacs/terminals,etc (ie, not an IDE proper) what sort of projects are you working on? Are they big? Production? Are these the tools you use at work? Or mostly for smaller things...or big things broken into small things? Sorry...enough questions.
I ask because I'm studying computer science right now, and am super excited about it. I had an internship programming J2ME for a government agency recently and it was Netbeans and eclipse all the way. So I've only had a few "minor-league" years in the business.
In short, what is practical for the CL type tools, versus an IDE such as 'beans and VS. I've got a lot to learn, and the CL tools will probably teach me, versus shielding me like an full on IDE might.
What sort of projects are you working on?
All kind... vim is my main "IDE" anywhere
Are they big?
Yes... My FOSS project CppCMS written almost 100% in vim
Production?
Yes, most of production code (Not FOSS) I write today I use vim.
Are these the tools you use at work?
Yes.
I would explain severak simple things:
vim provides almost all tools IDE does, highlighting, spellcheck, autocomplition, working with multiple buffers, build, context "jumps" (decl, def) and much more
It is extreamly portable, I work with it on Windows, Linux, OpenVMS, Solaris, FreeBSD.
It is very light in comparison to bloated IDE.
There is only one thing I do use IDE today: debugging hard bugs.
Emacs/Vim can be used for any sized projects.
Generally, you won't get to choose the environment, the job you find will have one already picked out for you (unless it's non-Java programming in Unix, in which case use what you want).
I wouldn't sweat the choice, just learn to use which ever editor/IDE is available to its utmost extent.
I use (and have used) Emacs for personal projects, and in two different companies on software projects exceeding 10M lines of production code each.
I use emacs. I would recommend emacs. I have used emacs since before it was emacs: TECO, TV, and the e macro package on the Decsystem-20.
I can use vim if I need to but what you learn is largely what is at hand and you get into.
Yes, learn one or both. And I would say, if the IDE fits, wear it too.
I use vim for everything, I hate IDEs, they're too bloated for me.
I haven't used it for any massive projects (because I haven't written any massive projects), but if I were going to, I would still use vim.
When learning I new language, I believe it's best to not use IDEs at all, and to learn the "proper" way of doing it (like for c++, learning the command line switches and using makefiles).
Twenty years ago all my programming was done in plain text editors, mostly emacs, but technology has improved over the years.
I still do use plain text editors to write code occasionally, but only when it is inconvenient to install an IDE on the machine where I'm writing code. For example, a few times I've stopped by a client site without my laptop and wanted to write a quick program.
This is also an issue with certain embedded systems, where you may want to update the code interactively through a RS232 or USB based command line interface.
Most modern IDEs provide enough acceleration to the code editing process that I will install one whenever I expect to use the computer for development for more than two or three hours.
I use vim for everything from small one-off scripts to 1000+ line production code. It is so versatile that working in any other environment seems constricting. If I'm part of a project that necessitates a standard environment (IDE) then I'll do as much coding as I can in vim and then import into the ide.
I believe everyone should be able to operate effectively in a command-line environment. You can't always be sure that anything except the basic tools will be available on the target machines, you can't be sure that you'll have enough system to pull up a full IDE, and you might actually find the system you're building is too complicated for an IDE.
I've built systems that have consisted of multiple interoperating clients and servers distributed across multiple physical machines. In these efforts, I have used command line tools almost exclusively in the server side. I will use DDD when I can, but I also know the underlying gdb. If the clients are Windows, I'll use the Visual Studio IDE, but if they're UNIX, I'll go with the command line.
Figure out how to work effectively using minimal tools. You'll be a better developer and you'll actually appreciate the integrated tools more, if they're done better.
BTW, I put Emacs in the IDE class. I've got a friend who comes in and fires it up first thing and doesn't leave the environment all day. It's more than an IDE, in fact, since he does mail, surfing, etc. in the thing, or so he tells me.
For large projects with 100+ files, using an IDE is very important. But there are lots of small small things which you need to keep doing all the time while working on even large projects. Firing up the IDE for all of these may not be worthwhile. Having a good command on a powerful editor like Vim or Emacs is something I would consider as an essential skill for any programmer. But an appropriate IDE should also be used to accelerate regular development work as per project needs.
Hmm... Well, look at it this way:
I open code in emacs. I edit it. I use code completion (and I've even played with intellisense emacs)... When I'm ready to compile, I hit CTRL+F7... A key I've bound... It builds in a small popup window... If there are any errors, I can jump to them in the code by hitting f8 (another bound key)... Once it's all building, I hit f5... (this runs a little program I wrote that parses the Makefile and determines the path the executable)... This starts the debugger in a small popup window... I can click on code lines to set break points... etc... I debug... I can "next" through the code with F10... I can "step" through the code with F11 (more key bindings)... When it's all done I hit Shift-F7 to package (.rpm) the project.
So, do I have an IDE? Or am I just using a plain text editor?
1. Yes. 2. Any kind of project.
There is no limit to the size of a system that can be developed in Vim/Emacs/Unix, in fact, there are fewer limits than there are in IDE's. Let's look at a few things I use...
SYSTEM LINES OF CODE
Linux kernel 10,000,000
NetBSD 4,000,000
Ruby 200,000
Those are pretty big systems.
I don't believe any of them were developed with IDE software.
I tend to agree that for learning it is a good idea to understand the basics: the fact that you edit the code, you compile it with a compiler, link it with a linker, debug it with a debugger.
It makes it easier to grasp the concepts. And it makes easier to move from platform to platform.
So, learn vi, make, gdb, some version control system (git, svn).
But for production I would say that getting familiar with the "standard IDE" of the environment is a must (Visual Studio for Windows, XCode for Mac OS, Eclipse for Java, etc.)
No mater what other say, mastering an IDE will increase your productivity.
If you used vi/emacs for 10 years and try Eclipse or Visual Studio for few days, you will say that they are bloated and don't offer anything in exchange. That's BS. The more open minded you are, the better you will be.
I use Emacs to develop commercial software with size of several millions LoC, and massive use of templates, etc. I use CEDET + gnu global as auxiliary packages + yasnippet, etc.
well...I have to say that I'm a vimmer. Using a IDE, I don't to care so many things like when you use editor like vim/emacs. But when you do a bit more, you will find the IDE you use is more hindering than helping in your program developping process. alas...if you insist in using vim/emacs as your editor, you will encounter "a deep learning curve", you will waste so many time even to acchieve so trivial a function in your editor,you will be desperate when you are busy catching up with your timetable if you just pick them up......you have to settle down and start leaning and also playing with editors and a couple of days, you will find you've already achieve more than you can ever expect!
My standard IDE is a flock of xterms running some mix of vim editors, man page documentation, debuggers, log tails, and command lines to execute things, plus an instance of Firefox for pulling up additional docs or (where applicable) testing web-based code. This is what I use for all projects these days, regardless of size, whether personal or professional.
Pretty much the only time I've seen real benefit to using an IDE has been when I've been working on platform-native GUI apps, where they make it so much easier to build forms and wire up their controls. But I haven't done that sort of work in over a decade - the last one I did was in Deplhi, back when Borland still owned it; I think version 4 had just come out, although it might have been 3.
Emacs is a great tool (so is Vim) for programming, and I use them to develop my code for physics research. As added benefit (for me) Emacs handles remote files nicely via Tramp, so that's big boom for me since I very often have to visit remote servers.
With that said, every time I need to write an application with a GUI and within a large framework (like c# with .NET or the android framework) I always find it hard to development with just emacs. The IDEs (Visual Studio, Eclipse) simply have everything including autocomplete and lookup with appropriate content from the framework, and debugging, even though code writing part is always unsatisfactory (I always end up installing some sort of emacs plugin for the IDE, which always fall short of Emacs proper!).
Sometimes it just takes too long to setup an environment in Emacs for those kinds of projects since that is not the default way envisioned by the designers, and having an environment that works out of box is so much easier than banging my head against the wall to find usually obscure information on how to compile/debug those app without using the designated IDE.
We could sum things up by saying that editors like emacs / vi implements some of the functionnalities of IDEs by using CL tools (or the libs behind the CL tools).
Your main issue in using an editor as an IDE would be :
configuring it to have exactly the functionnalities you are happy with in an IDE is not necessarily straigh-forward (I ask for sympathy from anyone who ever tried to configure CEDET ;) ), as opposed to working out-of-the-box with IDEs
the way such functionnalities work in editors is very tied to CL, so you need at least a vague understanding of the CL beforehand.
The advantages are the fact that CL tools are sometimes more ubiquitous than IDEs. Also mastering CL opens the door to scripting your build ("make a build in one command" as opposed to "make a build in one click"), which opens the door to automated nighly builds, continuous integration, etc... all of which are harder to setup if your understanding of the build stops at hitting F6 or whatever.

Is there a C++ gdb GUI for Linux? [closed]

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Briefly: Does anyone know of a GUI for gdb that brings it on par or close to the feature set you get in the more recent version of Visual C++?
In detail: As someone who has spent a lot of time programming in Windows, one of the larger stumbling blocks I've found whenever I have to code C++ in Linux is that debugging anything using commandline gdb takes me several times longer than it does in Visual Studio, and it does not seem to be getting better with practice. Some things are just easier or faster to express graphically.
Specifically, I'm looking for a GUI that:
Handles all the basics like stepping over & into code, watch variables and breakpoints
Understands and can display the contents of complex & nested C++ data types
Doesn't get confused by and preferably can intelligently step through templated code and data structures while displaying relevant information such as the parameter types
Can handle threaded applications and switch between different threads to step through or view the state of
Can handle attaching to an already-started process or reading a core dump, in addition to starting the program up in gdb
If such a program does not exist, then I'd like to hear about experiences people have had with programs that meet at least some of the bullet points.
Does anyone have any recommendations?
Edit:
Listing out the possibilities is great, and I'll take what I can get, but it would be even more helpful if you could include in your responses:
(a) Whether or not you've actually used this GUI and if so, what positive/negative feedback you have about it.
(b) If you know, which of the above-mentioned features are/aren't supported
Lists are easy to come by, sites like this are great because you can get an idea of people's personal experiences with applications.
Eclipse CDT will provide an experience comparable to using Visual Studio. I use Eclipse CDT on a daily basis for writing code and debugging local and remote processes.
If you're not familiar with using an Eclipse based IDE, the GUI will take a little getting used to. However, once you get to understand the GUI ideas that are unique to Eclipse (e.g. a perspective), using the tool becomes a nice experience.
The CDT tooling provides a decent C/C++ indexer that allows you to quickly find references to methods in your code base. It also provides a nice macro expansion tool and limited refactoring support.
With regards to support for debugging, CDT is able to do everything in your list with the exception of reading a core dump (it may support this, but I have never tried to use this feature). Also, my experience with debugging code using templates is limited, so I'm not sure what kind of experience CDT will provide in this regard.
For more information about debugging using Eclipse CDT, you may want to check out these guides:
Interfacing with the CDT debugger, Part 2: Accessing gdb with the Eclipse CDT and MI
CDT Debug Tutorial
gdb -tui works okay if you want something GUI-ish, but still character based.
You won't find anything overlaying GDB which can compete with the raw power of the Visual Studio debugger. It's just too powerful, and it's just too well integrated inside the IDE.
For a Linux alternative, try DDD if free software is your thing.
Check out Nemiver C/C++ Debugger. It is easy to install in Ubuntu (Developer Tools/Debugging).
Update: New link.
Qt Creator seems like good stuff. A colleague showed me one way set it up for debugging:
Create a new project, "Import of Makefile-based Project".
Point it to your root project folder (it will index sources under it, and it is impressively fast).
Go to project settings and add a run configuration, then specify the executable you want to debug, and its arguments.
Qt Creator seems to insist on building your project before debugging it. If you don't want that, or don't use make, just go to projects -> build (Left panel), then, on the right panel in "Build Steps", remove all the steps, including the step by default when you created the project.
That may seem like a bit much work for debugging an app I had already compiled, but it is worth it. The debugger shows threads, stacks and local variables in a similar way to Visual Studio and even uses many of the same keyboard shortcuts. It seems to handle templates well, at least std::string and std::map. Attaching to existing processes and core dumps seems to be supported, though I haven't tested it yet.
Keep in mind that I used it for less than and hour now, but I'm impressed so far.
I loathe the idea of Windows development, but the VC++ debugger is among the best I've seen. I haven't found a GUI front end that comes close to the VC one.
GDB is awesome once you really get used to it. Use it in anger enough and you'll become very proficient. I can whiz around a program doing all the things you listed without much effort anymore. It did take a month or so of suffering over a SSH link to a remote server before I was proficient. I'd never go back though.
DDD is really powerful but it was quite buggy. I found it froze up quite often when it got messages from GDB that it didn't grok. It's good because it has a gdb interface window so you can see what's going on and also interact with gdb directly. DDD can't be used on a remote X session in my environment (a real problem, since I'm sitting at a thin client when I do Unix dev) for some reason so it's out for me.
KDevelop followed typical KDE style and exposed EVERYTHING to the user. I also never had any luck debugging non KDevelop programs in KDevelop.
The Gnat Programming Studio (GPS) is actually quite a good front-end to GDB. It doesn't just manage Ada projects, so it's worth trying out if you are in need of a debugger.
You could use Eclipse, but it's pretty heavy weight and a lot of seasoned Unix people I've worked with (me included) don't care much for its interface, which won't just STFU and get out of your way. Eclipse also seems to take up a lot of space and run like a dog.
I use cgdb, simple and usefull
I use DDD a lot, and it's pretty powerful once you learn to use it. One thing I would say is don't use it over X over the WAN because it seems to do a lot of unnecessary screen updates.
Also, if you're not mated to GDB and don't mind ponying up a little cash, then I would try TotalView. It has a bit of a steep learning curve (it could definitely be more intuitive), but it's the best C++ debugger I've ever used on any platform and can be extended to introspect your objects in custom ways (thus allowing you to view an STL list as an actual list of objects, and not a bunch of confusing internal data members, etc.)
I used KDbg (only works under KDE).
Check out the Eclipse CDT project. It is a plugin for Eclipse geared towards C/C++ development and includes a fairly feature rich debugging perspective (that behind the scenes uses GDB). It is available on a wide variety of platforms.
DDD is the GNU frontend for gdb: http://www.gnu.org/software/ddd/
Similar comfortable to the eclipse gdb frontend is the emacs frontend, tightly tied to the emacs IDE. If you already work with emacs, you will like it:
GDB Emacs Frontend
Qt Creator-on-Linux is certainly on par with Visual Studio-on-Windows for C++ nowadays. I'd even say better on the debugger side.
I've tried a couple of different guis for gdb and have found DDD to be the better of them.
And while I can't comment on other, non-gdb offerings for linux I've used a number of other debuggers on other platforms.
gdb does the majority of the things that you have in your wish list. DDD puts a nicer front on them. For example thread switching is made simpler. Setting breakpoints is as simple as you would expect.
You also get a cli window in case there is something obscure that you want to do.
The one feature of DDD that stands out above any other debugger that I've used is the data "graphing". This allows you to display and arrange structures, objects and memory as draggable boxes. Double clicking a pointer will open up the dereferenced data with visual links back to the parent.
There's one IDE that is missing in this list and which is very efficient (I've used it in many C/C++ projects without any issues): Netbeans.
What can be stepped through is going to be limited by the debugging information that g++ produces, to a large extent. Emacs provides an interface to gdb that lets you control it via the toolbars/menus and display data in separate windows, as well as type gdb commands directly. Eclipse's CDT provides similar tools. I've heard of Anjuta and Code::Blocks but never used them.
As someone familiar with Visual Studio, I've looked at several open source IDE's to replace it, and KDevelop comes the closest IMO to being something that a Visual C++ person can just sit down and start using. When you run the project in debugging mode, it uses gdb but kdevelop pretty much handles the whole thing so that you don't have to know it's gdb; you're just single stepping or assigning watches to variables.
It still isn't as good as the Visual Studio Debugger, unfortunately.
Have you ever taken a look at DS-5 debugger?
There is a paid version which includes a lot of helpful features, but you can also use Community Edition for free (which is also quite useful especially for embedded systems).
I have a positive experience with this tool when debugging Android applications on real device using eclipse.
You don't mention whether you are using Windows or UNIX.
On UNIX systems, KDevelop is good but I use KDbg because it is easy to use and will also work with apps not developed in KDevelop.
Eclipse is good on both platforms.
On Windows, there is a great package called Wascana Desktop Developer which is Eclipse CDT and MinGW all packaged up and preconfigured nicely for the minimum of pain. Its the best thing I've found for developing GNU code on Windows.
I have used all these debuggers and none of them are as good as MS Dev Studio. Eclipse/Wascana is probably the closest but it does have limitations like you cannot step into DLLs and it doesn't do as good a job at examining variables.
The Code:Blocks C++ IDE has a graphical wrapper, with a few of the features you want, but nothing like the power of VS.
VisualGDB is another Visual Studio plugin to develop and debug applications on linux and embedded platforms.
KDevelop works pretty well.
Have you tried gdb -w with cygwin gdb.
It is supossed to have a windows interface which works fairly well.
The only problem I found is that on my present machine it didn't run that way until after I installed ddd. I suspect that it requires tcltk which was installed when I installed ddd.
Latest version of Geany supports it (only on Linux, though)
If you are looking for gdb under Visual Studio, then check WinGDB.
In the last 15 months I use insight (came with FC6). It is not great, it is written in Tcl/Tk, but it is simple and useful. DDD is of similar quality / utility, but somewhat harder to use (various GUI gotchas and omissions). I also tried to integrate gdb with my IDE, SlickEdit. It worked OK (I played some 4 hours with it), but I did not like the GUI context switches. I like my IDE to remain unchanged while I am debugging; on Windows I use SlickEdit for IDE and Visual Studio Debugger for debugging. So from the 3: Insight, DDD and SlickEdit, Insight is my 1st choice, I use it >95% of the time, command-line gdb and DDD make up the other 5%. If I get the chance, I will eval Eclipse at some point, my work PC does not seem to have enough RAM (1GB only) to run Eclipse reasonably well.
I have also heard a lot of praise for TotalView, including 1st hand during a job interview. I obtained an eval for our company in late 2008, but in the end we did not proceed as gdb was good enough for our needs; and it is free and ubiquitous.
Use www.zero-bugs.com/
Zero debugger, it requires C++0x support from gcc
I was searching for a debugger to step through a running programm. Say: Attach. The programm was build with eclipse, but because of maybe some multithreadding obstrucles, no sourcefiles where fond. What ever.
I got very compfortable with NetBeans.
[debug] from menu -> Attach Deugger...
as process chose the one to debug
as project [new project]
Now the window disappars and you see nothing. detach from the process. The Read Square "Stop" helps.
import source from the project as e.g. folder. ".../MyProject/src
Now it appears in your project, and you can set breakpoints.
again ttach debugger
chose the process to debug.
debugger should stop if programm reaches next breakpoint.
Going to [window] -> [Debugging] -> Will your window make compfortable.