I'm hoping to write an open source IDE for a programming language I'm designing. I was wondering if anyone knew of any lightweight IDE's written in C++, that I could use as a starting place. Ideally I want to use something BSD licensed, however I'm willing to consider other licenses if it is required.
Thank you in advance for any help you can provide.
EDIT:
I want to develop a custom interface for each platform. For example, use Objective-C to create a Mac OS X specific interface for it.
Eclipse is the best way to go. However you might want to check
Code::Blocks or
KDevelop
Shameless plug...
You may want to investigate Ecere, an under-appreciated, BSD-licensed SDK. It uses its own language called "eC", an object-oriented extension to C (sort of like C++) that compiles by generating C code.
Ecere is nice in that it's light-weight and easy to use, features markedly missing from other open source IDEs (if you disagree, please enlighten me). It's not nice in that it's buggy and lacking in many respects.
Whether or not the Ecere IDE is easy to re-purpose for your programming language or not, you'll have to see for yourself. It might be easy because Ecere is not humongous, and the Ecere maintainer (not me) will be more than happy to help you along. On the other hand, maybe writing an Eclipse plugin would be easier, though I can't vouch for it at all, as I don't use Eclipse.
The advantage of Ecere, for what you want to do, is that it's a lightweight IDE with good access to the C, and has exactly the license you're looking for. The disadvantage is that it's not a well-established platform with a lot of users.
I was pretty happy with Eclipse, except for perf.
I would recommend taking a look at Qt Creator; Because it is written on top of the Qt SDK you get a cross-platform version (almost) for free.
Related
I am just starting out learning to program C++. Visual Studio is nice but its so picky and its caused a lot of problems for me getting my code to compile. So I heard code blocks is a good one. Does anyone know of any others that are simple and hassle free? I tried to create a hello world program in VS 2010 with the instructions in my book and of course it went crazy and said you can't do this that and the other. =/
You are going to have to learn, sooner hopefully, than later.. C++ requires you to be very specific in writing your code, and it doesn't matter which version you use. C++ is a standard language, and all compilers more or less conform to the same specification.
If your code isn't compiling, it's because you're doing something wrong when you are writing it. Give some examples, and we may be able to help. A new compiler won't change anything.
The syntax is language specific. There's no (good) programming language that allows you to type your code loosely.
Nevertheless, take a look at my answer on another question.
If you are looking for lighter IDEs then you may take a look at this.
Not sure what you mean by picky – if you don't mean the compiler but the IDE (that it gets to much in your way in the writing process) I suggest you try it with a general-purpose text editor and standalone compiler instead. I like kate best, when forced to use Windows I take Notepad++. As the compiler you could e.g. continue using Visual, go for gcc (MinGW on Windows), or the Intel C++ compiler.
All that is IMO much easier on a Linux, so my recommendation would be [K/X]Ubuntu + kate + gcc. (You can still easily port the programs to Windows, much easier than it is the other way around.)
Take a look at Notepad++ a free source code editor which supports several programming languages running under the MS Windows environment and MinGW (windows port of gcc).
My teacher recommended us to use notepad++ and cygwin for our programming needs. Are there any better solutions anyone can recommend out there to program and compile?
Myriad of various IDE's.... Eclipse CDT, Visual Studio Express, Code::Blocks, DevCPP....
And yes, Notepad++ and Cygwin with gcc would be a very viable option if you only need to compile single files for your homework.
Use a IDE
An integrated development environment (IDE) (also known as integrated design environment, integrated debugging environment or interactive development environment) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of:
a source code editor
a compiler and/or an interpreter
build automation tools
a debugger
A few of them to choose from
http://netbeans.org/index.html
http://www.codeblocks.org/
http://www.eclipse.org/cdt/
In my opinion, a very important tool for beginners is a debugger. A lot of question can be answered by yourself if you have a look into the debugger. You can use the gdb but it is hard to use and understand for beginners. So I would recommend to use Visual C++ 2010 Express which has an excellent and easy to use debugger.
Disclaimer:
The following are personal opinions, related to my personal taste on
the subject. Anyone in the programmer community has its own taste and
preferences an can agree or not. Here I just want to tell you about
some rationals. Consider products and related names as "examples."
My Answer
There are mainly three ways to write code:
The manual one
The assisted one
The automated one.
Think to them as:
Driving your car alone
Driving with a navigator
Driving with an autopilot.
Here "driving alone" means "use a generic text editor, a command-line based compiler and a command-line based debugger. The editor may eventually have a clue about the language syntax (thus differentiating different language structural elements, like keyword, literals, operators etc.) but knowing really nothing about what you are coding.
This is what notepad++ does. It makes coding harder, but for very simple things makes you really learn how to "drive".
A "navigator" is a basic IDE like Devc++, or like CodeBlocks: they have the notion of "project", manage the relation between files and manage the invocation of the compiler and debugger, managing the mapping on their output respect to your sources.
You write your own code, but the "road to compile" is told by the "navigator" you have to trust.
An "autopilot" is a more complex IDE (like VisualStudio, Netbeans, Eclipse ...) that can also "manage the code" providing code analysis for either syntax and semantics, context sensitive auto-completion, code generation for common tasks.
They can give you some code you have to complete and connect together.
They make you faster in producing code, testing it, debugging it, but you must have more trust in them or know how they "suggest".
They can be productive, but you have to "configure" them to suite your needs.
Now: since everything is a matter of "trust", and you cannot trust what you don't know yet, and is a matter of "knowing yuur needs" (but a learner may not yet have an idea abut them)
starting with "beasts" like VisualStudio (that mess arout 50% of your computer registry, pretend you to download GIGABYTES from the Internet and installs GIGABYTES of whatever MS library) is clueless: before you will start using all of that, will take years, and VS itself will be changed 2 or three times) or Eclipse (that has the more powerful syntax and semantic analizer, but requires lot of "arcane configuration" you don't even know since you didn't make the first step in programming) may be an excess. At least until your programs will stay in a couple of pages.
starting win notepad++ and GCC (or Mingw) is just a matter of dowload few megabytes, set a PATH, and you go. Fastest way to turn the key on.
when things become more complex, and require some help in organize them, simple IDE like CodeBloks or Codelite are more than effective at "to the point". I will avoid Dev-C++: it's OLD, and doesn't support the "state of art of the C++ language". You an live with them for all your scolarity
when going to more professional kind of projects, and your experience in "using tools" is better, things like Eclipse, or NetBeans may become more "effective". I will in any case avoid VisualStudio: it's not that "effective". But it is the best to develop in Microsoft environments producing MS oriented applications, especially in the ".Net" world. Something you will not see before 2/3 years of experience.
If you're learning you can download VStudio Express. I believe it's free. Easier to use than notepad and cygwin. This isn't a biased opinion. I'm a Linux C++ developer most days but acknowledge the fact that it might be easier to learn using VStudio.
If you are using linux, you can use kate and g++ for editing and compiling c++ files.
If you are using windows, I think your teacher's recommendations are good. Althought there are various IDE's for C++, it is better to use a simple editor that doesn't have code completion and compilation feature while learning a programming language for the first time. IDE's are nice but not good for learners I think.
It's probably a good idea to go with your teacher's suggestion, since you might also need some help in the future, either from him or your colleagues. Another advantage is that, being in school, you'll probably develop using more than one programming language. Notepad++ has support for almost everything you can think of, so you can use it not only for this course. That way you'll have an advantage because you'll learn shortcuts, etc...
If you plan on doing a lot of programming in the future, I highly recommend putting the effort into learning VIM. Nothing else can touch it in terms of speed and power. It has built-in shell access and it is programmable. It is like having God in your text editor. The major down-side is the steep learning curve.
Also, you want to use Git in-case you screw-up and want to go back to a previous point. It lets you periodically check-point your code so you can always go back. For example, maybe you delete something, then later on decide you want to use that code after all. If you've been check-pointing with Git, you can get it back.
Graphical differs sometimes come in handy too.
I started coding in C++ using Turbo C++(the default program available on college computers, I told them it was prehistoric), but then I found Visual Studio Express and never looked back since that day.
Also since i could not install Visual Studio on College computers, I put a portable version of DevC++ on my pen drive to use there.
Eventually I got the College to install Visual Studio Express editions on all Lab Computers (Once I managed to convince them that it was free with no Licensing issues)
For a beginner, go with a text editor and a compiler. Helps you in understanding what actually goes on.
You could use Dev-C++, which is a good compiler for C and C++, if you want lightweight.
Otherwise Visual Studio probably.
is there a multiplatform c++ compiler that could be linked into any software ?
Lets say I want to generate c++ code at runtime, compile it and run it.
I'm looking for a compact solution (bunch of classes), preferably LGPL/BSD licence :)
As far as I know it can be done in Java and c#. What about c++ ?
Well maybe one of the modules of CLang will be of help? It's not dry yet on the C++ side but certainly will be soon.
I don't know of any open source ones for C++, but if you want small and compact scripting and are not hung up on C++ LUA might be an option for you
I'd drop C++ altogether and use Google V8. If you wanted to use C++ because the people using your app only know this, they should have no difficulties going to javascript.
And it's damn fast. And Javascript is a cool language too.
I've done this years ago in Linux by generating C++-code into a file, compile it by shell execute (with gcc) and then linking in the generated library dynamically. The dynamic linking differs of course between platforms.
This kind of thing is much much harder in C++, because the language doesn't use a virtual machine (or "runtime") that abstracts machine specifics away.
You could look into gcc, it's under the GPL IIRC, and ports exist for all major platforms.
When we looked into scripting we chose AngelScript because of the similarity with C++.
V8 is great but it's certainly limited to some platforms, AngelScript is a lot easier to compile with and probably to learn (if you came from C++) and it has a zlib license.
http://www.angelcode.com/angelscript/
As far as I know it is hard to learn using Eclipse from scratch. But I will get such benefits as fast source code browsing, call graphs, static code analysis. What other benefits will I get from using Eclipse for C++ (CDT)?
I learned Eclipse for C++. It is flexible and offers many features. I no longer use it for C++.
What I found is that CDT feels like an "add on" rather than an intrinsically supported environment. Perhaps because it is an add on. Eclipse is written in and primarily supports Java development.
It was also rather buggy at the time but that was two years ago. I think today's CDT is probably more refined.
Lastly, it took a long time to start and some editing operations were rather slow. I was able to find a vi plugin for it, but it wasn't free and wasn't a perfect emulation.
Today I use a commercial editor that is fast and doesn't feel like it is out of its element. I would encourage you to try Eclipse and see for yourself if it meets your needs.
I used Eclipse with C++ only for a short time, and rather I could use Eclipse with Java for some months. Now that I'm not using it, I feel that some important features are missing.
Eclipse is pretty heavy, but has some great features that I can't find easily somewhere else.
I can live without code analysis and project management (for small projects), but some features about source code navigation and refactoring are really unique and I really miss them.
IMHO, Eclipse is worth learning, even if it won't become your default IDE.
If you don't want the giant size and lethargic performance of Eclipse, try Code::Blocks, which is a cross-platform C++ IDE actually written in C++. They have just released a spanking new version (10.05).
I've been using Eclipse now for more than 6 years and I couldn't find a (free) IDE which has so many features.
I neside the obvious ones (automatic build, syntax highlighting, indexing of function etc)
you have the plugins.
You are working with a versioning system? No need to learn the command line commands. Just use the appropriate Eclipse Plugin (SVN, C++).
You are using a testing framework? CUTE and ECUT provide you with macros to create the test suites and summarise their results.
Another nice bonus: Eclipse is available for Windows/Linux/OS X although it is slightly superior on Linux (due to the easy availability of other tools)
If Eclipse still does not have keyboard macros I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot poll for development with any language. Better to use vim or emacs IMO, or better yet emacs in viper-mode. :)
Some Points which should be true for most IDEs:
automated generation of build scripts
highligting of compiler errors and warnings in the source
integration with source control svn, git, ... (subversion, egit, ...)
code completion
debugging
other things (plugins)
Eclipse against other IDEs:
Platform independent
Free with complete functionality
I'd say that it is worth the effort to learn it.
Eclipse for C++ isn't as good as for Java, but it still beats not having any IDE.
F3 and Ctrl-Space is a good enough reason to leave any plain text editor behind.
Learning an IDE isn't a waste of your time at all. Try Eclipse, Visual Studio (if you're on that platform), Netbeans and anything you can think of. You might find something you really like.
Edit: Since you specify that you're on Windows, I'd say try out the free Visual Studio version. From my (limited) experience, it feels better suited for c++ on that platform.
It can help make cross-platform development (for Windows and Linux) a lot easier.
Very much depends on what you do.
If you need to work on shared projects that use Eclipse => learn it.
If you just write 10 or 100 lines of code altogether => use text editor.
If you just started coding, go for an IDE that works best for you. This can be Eclipse, but it could be Visual Studio on Windows or Xcode on Mac, especially given the choice of language.
For quite small projects, you can also get away with good editors that support syntax highlighting. Although a complete IDE makes editing, compiling and debugging much easier.
My choice is Xcode on Mac, Visual Studio on Windows. Eclipse only for Java for me on any platform.
Let me be very presumptuous for a moment and tell you what you really want.
You do not want to learn an IDE.
What you want is an easy and efficient tool, that will seamlessly assist you in writing c++ code. C++ is already difficult enough, ideally you should concentrate on it and forget about the IDE.
My advice. Let VI and Emacs to the dinosaurs. If you're on windows go for Visual Studio (the Express edition is freely available for personal use), otherwise Eclipse and Code::Blocks are good choices.
I rarely use an IDE. It is much easier and faster to use a good text editor (VEDIT) and then use make for building. Of course, you can call compilers, make, debugger etc. directly from VEDIT, then browse errors etc.
I have tried Eclipse a few times. The first thing I noticed is that it is really heavy. Cold start takes about 2 minutes on my machine, and subsequent starts around 20 to 30 seconds. (In comparison, with VEDIT, cold start is 1.5 seconds and any subsequent starts about 0.5 seconds.) The UI of Eclipse has lots of unnecessary clutter on screen, so there is not so much room for the code being edited. Eclipse can not edit files larger than a few megabytes, so you need another editor for editing large log files, memory dumps etc. anyway.
A good programmers editor does have fast source code browsing, function lists, call graphs etc, you do not need an IDE for that. The tools for static analysis (such as Lint, Klockworks etc.) are separate tools anyway, but you can call them from a text editor just as well as from IDE. Text editor can be integrated to version control, too (but you may need to do some configuration work yourself).
The advantage of a general purpose text editor is that you can use the same tool for all your text editing, so you will learn to use it effectively.
What is special about IDE is that it is usually more tightly coupled to some specific language. For example, it may contain full on-line help and code completion for the language library, API functions etc. Those may be useful to someone.
To my mind it is worth to learn Eclipse. Or just try it. It is widespread development environment. I saw various fields where Eclipse or IDEs based on it used from embedded development to mobile development.
I am writing a small C++ program for fun and for extending my C++ skill. Since its scope is relatively small, I also planning to try out cross-platform development by making this program support both Windows and Linux.
I reckon my C++ proficiency is sitting somewhere between casual and intermediate level: OO, a bit of templates and design patterns, used STL before and trying to look into it more in details, ... However, while coding this little program, I find that the deeper I dig into C++, the more pain I feel, especially when I come to understanding and dealing with differences between different platform's/vendor's implementation.
The use of cross-platform frameworks like Qt, ACE, Boost seems help to speed up development a lot thus make life easier, but I worry if this will beat my purpose. Can somebody give some advice if there is any "best practice" for doing C++ cross-platform development? Thanks.
Can somebody give some advice if there is any "best practice" for doing C++ cross-platform development?
There are three things:
Write your own code so that it's portable
Wrap platform-specific APIs behind an abstraction/insulation/utility layer
Choose cross-platform libraries
You can choose option #2 and/or #3.
Advantages of #3 over #2 tend to be things like, "It's already written, debugged, and supported"; and the disadvantages are like, "I have to learn it, I might have to pay for it, I can't necessarily support it myself, and it may not do exactly what I want."
Developers will often prefer option #3 instead of #2, especially if it's free open source (which all three of the libraries that you cited are).
http://blog.backblaze.com/2008/12/15/10-rules-for-how-to-write-cross-platform-code/
Should provide more detail to the answers already given.
Also I suggest using existing libraries that abstract endianness, data type sizes and differences. The following should be considered before starting your cross-platform project.
GUI
Qt
XVT
wxWidgets
General Libraries/frameworks
STL (Incorporated in most platform libraries already)
Boost
Game Development
SDL
Cocos2d-x
Use gcc. It's available on both Windows and Linux and the libraries and language syntax is identical on both platforms.
For cross platform GUI applications, Qt is a good idea. There is no getting away from having a dependency on a GUI framework if you are trying to achieve platform independence.
Unless you are doing GUI stuff cross platform isn't a big problem.
There are some small issues to do with filesystems ( different / \ separators, allowed characters in filenames etc) but these are at the application level rather than the c++.
Doing major applications gets more complex, you need to handle help, file locations an possibly security and user info in a cross platform way. For simple algorithm type programming there isn't a problem.
Qt is mainly a GUI library, although it has extra cross platform filesystems stuff. STL, Boost, ACE are cross platform but that isn't there main point.
Use them! Seriously. The only reason you may not want to use them is if you plan on working in an environment where they're not available. But, given their cross-platform nature, that's not likely.
You will find that the benefit you get from using them is immense, even if they weren't cross-platform. The "best practice" you speak of is to be able to deliver your "product" as quicly and easily as possible.
I once answered a question from someone who stated he didn't want to use GUI libraries at a level above Xlib. If he'd actually ever used Xlib, he'd know the pain we'd all felt when forced to code at such a low level of abstraction. This makes about as much sense as wanting to code in assembler because C/C++?Python/Perl/everthting-else is simply a higher-level abstarction.
this answers are really good and you can make a list for find where is the beginning. but i think you should read some articles about "porting application".not relevant with cross-platform development but this can give you very large perspective about cross platform development. In cross-platform developing, one of more importing thing is memory issues like "endian" (byte order- byte order can show differences for tehnologies or platforms)
use boost. they take care of cross-platform stuff for you.
boost::filesystem is a great example
i think you can learn a lot from using ACE or equivalent libraries. they will boost your understanding of c++ and design patterns. i think this is the best thing you can do to improve your coding skills.
If your are really interested in making your code as cross-platform as possible, use as many compilers as possible. If you are using Windows and Linux, use VC and gcc, at the minimum. This will ensure that you don't use complier specific features, and that you don't rely on system specific behavior. Use more compilers (Intel, IBM, etc) and OSs (OS X, Solaris) if you have access to them.
You can try using U++ > http://www.ultimatepp.org/index.html