For a few years I was writing programs in Visual Studio for Windows and with GCC (Code Blocks) for Linux. Most of my libs compiled seamlessly as they worked both in Windows and Linux. However at the moment I am a bit confused, as I have to create an app using Cygwin. I don't really understand if I am still in UNIX/Linux environment, just running app on Windows by some "emulation", or I am rather on Windows just having access to some Linux/Unix functionality. From what I understood from the FAQ's and documentation it looks like I just should behave like in Linux environment.
All explanations I found in internet usually are very general and don't explain the detailed differences from programmers viewpoint.
Short question: Can I just write programs like I did for Linux without any major changes when using Cygwin?
Maybe.
A lot of code written for Linux will compile in Cygwin with very few problems, which can mainly be fixed by messing with preprocessor definitions.
However, any code written for linux which:
Uses a Linux driver
Directly accesses the kernel
Relies on any code which does either of these two things (and doesn't have a Windows counterpart)
will quite definitely not work, regardless of how much you modify the code.
Much as it tries to, Cygwin cannot fully emulate (yes it is an emulator, of sorts) everything a POSIX system can normally do. Cygwin is not windows, just a conversion layer from its own machine language.
For more information, read cygwin's wikia
Can I just write programs like I did for Linux without any major
changes when using Cygwin?
The platforms are not identical, so you can not realistically expect to write the program in Linux, and then POOF expect it to build and work under Cygwin. But if you don't use things not available under Windows, then you won't need major changes. And you can write non-trivial programs, which will build and work on both, perhaps needing a few #ifdefs in places.
From your question I take it you want to work on Linux, but write programs for running under Cygwin. In that case you must also build and test it in the Cygwin environment all the time, so:
Use version control, commit often. I recommend a DVCS like git or mercurial which have separate commit and push, it will allow you to do commits more freely.
Whenever you commit/push, do checkout/pull and build on the Cygwin host. You can do this manually or automatically (by simple custom script polling the version control, or by Jenkins or something).
When ever your code stops building or working under Cygwin, fix it before continuing with new code.
If Cygwin is not absolute requirement, then I would look into using Qt SDK. It can be used for non-Qt projects too, the MinGW toolchain on Windows is very similar to gcc on Linux. And if you're willing to use Qt, then it has all sorts of platform-independent features for things you might want to do, such as discover locations of standard directories for saving files, use threads, print things, have GUI...
A group of students and I are making a C++ game, but they have Windows and I have a Mac is there something we can use to share code between the systems?
I know Eclipse will work but I get Unresolved conclusion: <iostream> as an error. If anyone can help with that it would be great.
If you want something to actually "share the code" with, I would recommend git using github as the remote location. Its free and easy to use.
If your question is about the code not working, make sure you have X11 configured properly, and have the Eclipse C++ plugin installed.
And I would also recommend using XCode as your editor instead of Eclipse. It has a much better environment for C++, IMHO.
Hope this helps.
Personally I'd recommend setting up a cross-platform build process using something like CMake (http://www.cmake.org). CMake in particular will generate platform-specific project files for you -- so your friends could be working in Visual Studio and you could be working in Eclipse or XCode, with no problems at all (of course, you'd have to write portable code... :))
As far as sharing code and version control goes, I agree with Jon that something like git is ideal.
We build our Windows+Mac+Linux apps using Qt, which includes a nice build system (qmake) and cross-platform APIs (so the same code will run on all OS's) and an IDE (which I haven't used but I hear is okay).
With multiple developers you'll definitely want some sort of source-code-management system as well, git and svn are both good choices there.
I am a CS student but I CANNOT and please don't ask me why; I cannot use make and linux for my cs assignments. Is there anything in Windows 7 or Windows in general that is similar to make in linux? I want to do my assignments in windows instead of linux. What is the closest thing to make? I have eclipse but I wan't something simpler that I can still use simple commands and linking files in C++. Please help me. THanks (consider I'm a noob).
You can easily get a free (as in cost and freedom) make for Windows, both CygWin and GnuWin32 provide them. In fact, I seem to recall that Microsoft compilers have their own make as well (nmake from memory, but I could be wrong).
If you can't use any make, then the next best thing is probablt cmd files to build your entire solution. But, if you do that, you lose the dependency checking where make shines.
Is it that you can't use Linux, or that you can't use either Linux or make? There is a port of GNU Make for Windows: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/make.htm
The Microsoft SDK has both MSBuild and nmake (which is kind of like Unix make).
For slightly more exotic tools, there are scons and cmake, but both are pretty different from make.
You could also use maven. There's a bit of a learning curve, but it's starting to gain traction.
not to mention Ant (java) and nAnt (C#). They both run on Windows.
Also, Perforce's Jam, quite good for C/C++ builds, due to its divining dependencies on the fly. http://www.perforce.com/jam/jam.html
And the X11/X-Windows imake runs on Win32 as well. http://www.snake.net/software/imake-stuff/imake-faq.html#TOC_4
Lots o'choices.
Frankly, I don't see the attraction of XML for this sort of stuff. Makefiles have always seemed pretty obvious (and simple) to me.
I was reading today question on IDEs fo C++, and there are very good ones like Netbeans.
My question is about creating a software in C++ on Windows Environment, but let users install and run my software also on Linux and OSX.
Does netbeans has a compiler to do the job, or is there any good IDE which has a compiler for targeting my c++ code to these other environments?
thank you
QtCreator. It's awesome, slick and everything.
While it is not as feature rich as some competitors, it does many things just right that others don't.
I would say it is the one truly cross-platform IDE that is competitive to single-platform solutions. And it comes with tight integration of a very powerful and clean cross-platform toolkit. Something that you need for most cross-platform applications by itself.
I use Eclipse CDT and have had some degree of success. But I'm a Java programmer, so it's what I'm used to. It's worth checking out, and the extensions are quite cool.
Many people like Code::Blocks and it is cross-platform, with integrated debugging, code completion, etc. Qt Creator is also good and at least still very minimalistic.
Without a doubt VisualStudio with gnu make.
I've found Visual Studio to have the best IDE for C++. In addition, it's debugger and the way it handles multi-threaded applications is excellent.
And you can tweak the properties for your project to use different compilers and compiler flags of your choice, so it can build to any target.
You're talking about cross-compiling as GMan said, that's a compiler job, not IDE's and itu's kind of hard to make C++ software that runs well on Linux/Windows/MacOSX, C++ isn't a cross plataform language beacuse of its ABI, so you should try to use C++ standart code.
If you're making a consloe application there's no much problem just be care not to use system interface, but if you're planning to do some kind of graphics app then C++ it not the better choice for your purpose. Try some design that split the view from the controller/model of the app.
You can use QtCreator or NetBeans. First on C++ secord on Java. Both use MinGW g++.
Just a thought: you don't need to use a single IDE for all platforms. It is very common, for example, to use Visual Studio on Windows and Xcode on Mac OS X for cross-platform projects. I'm not familiar with Linux IDEs thought so couldn't recommend anything there.
Write makefiles for each OS? Simple enough seems to me.
Concerning cross plattform development it doesn't make a difference which IDE you use. Just make sure you use a cross platform (and possibly IDE independent) build system like SCons or cmake.
As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, visit the help center for guidance.
Closed 10 years ago.
I develop C++ applications in a Linux environment. The tools I use every day include Eclipse with the CDT plugin, gdb and valgrind.
What tools do other people use? Is there anything out there for Linux that rivals the slickness of Microsoft Visual Studio?
I use a bunch of terminal windows. I have vim running on interesting source files, make and g++ output on another for compiler errors or a gdb session for runtime errors. If I need help finding definitions I run cscope and use vim's cscope support to jump around.
Eclipse CDT is my second choice. It's nice but huge, ungainly and slow compared to vim.
Using terminal windows and vim is very flexible because I do not need to carry 400 MB of Java around with me I can use SSH sessions from anywhere.
I use valgrind when I need to find a memory issue.
I use strace to watch what my software is doing on a system call level. This lets me clean up really stupid code that calls time(0) four times in a row or makes too many calls to poll() or non-blocking read() or things like calling read() on a socket to read 1 byte at a time. (That is super inefficient and lazy!)
I use objdump -d to inspect the machine code, especially for performance sensitive inner loops. That is how I find things like the slowness of the array index operator on strings compared to using iterators.
I use oprofile to try to find hot spots in optimized code, I find that it often works a little better than gprof, and it can do things like look for data and instruction cache misses. That can show you where to drop some helpful prefetch hints using GCC's __builtin_prefetch. I tried to use it to find hot mis-predicted branches as well, but couldn't get that to work for me.
Update: I've found that perf works way better than oprofile. At least on Linux. Learn to use perf and love it as I do.
g++ of course, but also Code::Blocks which is an absolutely fantastic cross platform IDE (Win32, *nix, Mac).
I use the nightly (more like weekly lately) builds from the SVN. It has almost all the bells and whistles you would expect from a modern IDE. It's really a truly fantastic Open Source project.
Also, on Linux you get the joy of using Valgrind which is probably the best memory tracker (it does other things as well) tool that money can buy. And it's free :) Track down memory leaks and more with ease.
And there is just so much more! Linux is such a great dev platform :)
(edit) Just realized you mentioned Valgrind in your question, silly me for reading it too fast.
When develop C++ apps for linux, i prefer using a bunch of cmdline tools.
Vim extended with a lot of plugins.
Gdb with ddd, valgrind, libefence
and SCons (automake is a pain in ... you know where)
g++
emacs
bash command line
gdb-mode in emacs (type M-X gdb)
make
emacs, cmake, gdb, git, valgrind. It may not be as slick as Visual Studio but it works well, and it's easy to add functionality via bash scripting or emacs lisp.
Right now I use Qt Creator. It's cross-platform and integrates pretty nicely with Qt, though (of course) you have the option of creating a standalone application.
g++ and make
I believe KDevelop is what would be the closest from Microsoft Visual Studio.
You get pretty much everything (except unfortunately VS debugger which is indeed a killer).
Its already mature and its development is pretty fast and promising.
It actually implement a few stuff you won't even see in VS. For instance, open header file and cpp file in vertical tile mode, and have the cursor synchronized in both,
ie: when you select a functions prototype, you always have its implementation on your right.
KDevelop is a KDE project, but run on Gnome. Anjuta is an equivalent project on Gnome, but I find it unusable for real work. For the rest of the stack gcc make valgrind ddd (a gdb IDE) and python for scripting my code.
If you're ok to try a different approach than the VS IDE. You may consider trying vim. It takes a long time to get used to it though.
Eclipse CDT is really quite nice. I still have to resort to Emacs from time to time but I really love the indexing, call trees, type trees, refactoring support (thought it's nothing like Java refactoring), etc. Syntax highlighting is quite powerful if you customize it (can have separate colors for local variables, function arguments, methods, etc.). The code completion is really handy too. I've mostly used Eclipse 3.3 but 3.4 is great too.
Also, mostly I'm using this for a somewhat large project (~1e6 sloc) -- it may be overkill for toy projects.
When I developed C++ code on linux, I used emacs as an editor and as a gdb front-end. Later, my company purchased SlickEdit for all of the programmers, which is a nice IDE, maybe not on a par with Visual Studio. We used gdb extensively, with the occasional use of valgrind and gprof. I highly recommend using a scripting language to complement C++ on day-to-day tasks. I went from PERL to python to the current ruby. All of them get the job done and have strengths where C++ has weaknesses. And, of course, you have all the shell commands at your disposal. I daily use sort(), uniq(), awk, etc. And one more recommendation is ack, a grep successor.
You need a standard toolchain + an IDE.
There's nothing much to say about the standard toolchain. Just install e.g. on Ubuntu/Debian via
aptitude install build-essential
The interesting part is about an IDE.
My personal impression is that nowadays - in the 21th century - vi/emacs/make/autotools/configure is not enough for developing software projects above a certain size (... and yes, please please please blame me for the heritage heresy ...).
Which IDE to choose is simply a matter of taste. You will find a lot of threads on SOF. Here is a permalink discussing which C++ IDE might be the "best": C++ IDE for Linux.
I use the NetBeans C++ plugin, which is superb and integrates with CVS and SVN. The project management side is also very good. I was up and running with it in minutes. It's an impressive IDE but being Java, can be a little sluggish.
GCC
GHC
Vim
Cmake
cscope
GDB
Valgrind
strace
git
Is there really anything else you could possibly need?
Bash
Vim
Make
G++
GDB
Valgrind
Gprof
svn
Never a GUI to be seen except a good terminal with tab support; keep code, debugger, output, etc all in separate windows and tab back and forwards really quickly.
In addition to many already listed, we use the autoconf toolset for deploying our program to users.
CMake
vim
g++
kdevelop (compiled from SVN daily!)
Mercurial when I can, SVN when I have to, git when there's really no other choice (contributing to project that uses it)
valgrind
Anjuta is a nice idea that makes Linux C++ dev quite enjoyable as well.
I'm another for KDevelop. It has a very diverse set of tools. I'm not real familiar with VS and whether or not it has integrated console access via its interface, but KDevelop can allow you to run a konsole inside the IDE, which I always find very useful. You could always give Netbeans a go now that it has full C/C++ support.
Other than that, I make good use of gdb and its gui-based version ddd for problems with the code or other bugs. For throw-away programs, like others that already posted - I use g++ at the terminal and make for some larger projects.
Eclipse CDT for editing, SVN for source control, SCons for build management, CruiseControl for automated builds and a proprietary unit test framework.
I use Eclipse+CDT on Windows and Cygwin + g++ to cross compile for Linux.
(Cross compilers are built using crosstool, a nice script-set for generating cross compilers)
Mi first choice is allways emacs with a lot of plugins: ecb gives some buffers to navigate on the folders, gdb, svn or git integration... This is mi first choice using Python too.
As a second choice, Netbeans with C++ plugin, is very simple and quite powerfull, but too heavy I think.
I use whatever is on the system. I prefer Eclipse CDT as an editor, and g++ as a compiler. However, if eclipse is not an option I use vi, which is fine as well.
The Eclipse incubation project Linux Tools integrates C/C++ Development tools.
It's a GUI plugin to integrate tools like Valgrind, GProf, GCov, SystemTap etc into the Eclipse C++ CDT IDE.
Search for Eclipse Helios IDE for C/C++ Linux Developers (includes Incubating components), (120 MB)
Found this after trying to build Linux Tools using the .psf file available.
Thankfully found this package hiding right at the bottom of the Helios packages download page.
Note that this is an incubation project so you can expect the support to only get better with time.
See Also:
For updated info on installing and using Eclipse Linux Tools Click Here
FlexeLint for static code analysis, in addition to mentioned above:
Eclipse with CDT, gcc, make, gdb, valgrind, bash shell.
Source version control: Clearcase or git, depending on project.