I have a legacy C++ project on Linux which uses the typical:
./configure
make
make install
to build and install. I would really like to build it instead with an IDE like Eclipse.
Is this doable? Is there something in Eclipse that can parse the original Makefile(s) and turn it into an Eclipse project?
Using Eclipse with the CDT plugin will allow you to use it for C/C++ projects, and you can tell it to use Makefiles to build your project. You just have to set up a Makefile project. You might have to tell it to let you manage the Makefiles rather than have it do it - I don't remember off the top of my head - but there should be no problem in setting up Eclipse to use pre-existing Makefiles to build a pre-existing project. I've done it before.
You will have to tell it where the include directories are and what macros to assume are defined for things like code completion to work correctly (I don't know of any way for Eclipse to figure that out for you), so there is definitely some set up that you'll have to do. But it definitely works.
Just grab the C++ version of Eclipse from their site (it comes with all of the appropriate C/C++ plugins so that you don't have to track them down), and you can look at the CDT site for documentation, frequently asked questions, etc.
Edit: I don't know how well you can get it to work with configure though. That's not something that I've tried. Makefiles work just fine though.
If the project is not too big or too complex. You might do better to just start a new C++ project in Eclipse. Then import the various source and header files into the project.
Related
What is MakeFile in Eclipse? From the documentation:
A makefile is a text file that is referenced by the make command that
describes the building of targets, and contains information such as
source-level dependencies and build-order dependencies. The CDT can
generate a makefile for you, such projects are called Managed Make
projects. Some projects, known as Standard Make projects, allow you to
define your own makefile.
But the explanation does not help me understand what a MakeFile is. I am moving from VisualStudio/C# to Eclipse/C++. Is MakeFile analogous to Visual Studio's Metadata? When do I need to write a MakeFile, and why do I need it besides the C++ code?
[EDIT]
I used to develop on Windows with VS and C#. And now trying Eclipse/C++ on a Mac. I have never build anyone on Linux. So the answer I have read so far does not help explain anything at all.
A makefile in the simplest terms is a file that builds a program. These are normally used from the command line. If you have ever built something on linux you may have run ./configure ; make ; make install. You are using a makefile there.
More info...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_(software)
In simple terms: Make helps you create cross-platform configuration settings in one file, and it will work on surprisingly many platforms, including Windows or Mac OS-es.
Mentioning Windows, you should have Make installed on the computer you're installing on (on Windows, Cygwin and MinGW include Make). It's required only if the user will actually build the code from the source.
But of course, you should include Make code for each different platform (e.g. one for Unix-like, one for Windows, etc.)
I have been using Qt Creator as an IDE for some C++ project (non-QT) and I love it. Recently I have been thinking to try out Eclipse mainly for learning a new tool and also the fact that I'm not a big fan of the debugger mode in Qt Creator!
Anyhow, I figured I could potentially use the makefile generated by the qmake, but though hey let's also learn CMake! So, I was wondering if someone could point me to some nice tutorials on this (I have not had much luck myself)? Specifically, I like to have the ability to create and maintain CMakeList.txt files and build/run the project directly within Eclipse ... just as you would by editing a .pro file inside Qt Creator.
Thanks
CMake includes an Eclipse CDT4 generator since version 2.6; you should probably take a look at this page, it explains three different possibilities for using Eclipse and CMake together. From my personal experience, solution 1 works pretty well in Unix environments.
I'm looking for an IDE that automatically generates a cmake file from the project. Ideally I would like the project to be independent of the IDE. I am mainly working under linux but Windows is a major (and great) OS so ideally it would run on Windows as well. I'm not too bothered about that though as on Windows there is VS :).
Regards
EDIT: Yeah, I sort of see my mistake. I should have asked for an IDE that generates makefiles instead of cmake files since the cmake layer/step becomes useless (if the IDE can directly generate a makefile).
The purpose of CMake is to generate the Makefiles and projects that other development environments rely on, so what you're asking seems a little backwards. CMake is exactly the tool that does what you're asking to do, but in a different direction.
That said, KDevelop 4 has the option to use CMakeLists.txt files instead of the usual project file, but it doesn't work very well, and I've given up on trying to use it. Instead I edit the CMakeLists.txt file by hand - and KDevelop helpfully updates the GUI appropriately to reflect my changes.
i have source code of vc++ project. Now I am using linux.
i know how compile a single file .cpp not a whole project. So how to compile a VC project using g++ ?
A slight advantage of Makefiles would be possible integration with autotools (cough - It might prove handy to get the starting point for feature macros).[2]
There is a tool as part of winemaker that is EXCEEDINGLY helpful with fixing up a source tree that was assuming case insensitive names to work on a case-sensitive filesystem. (_it was intended mainly in order to build against winelib but that is not required)
If you want to keep using windows API's for some parts of the code, you can consider compiling with winelib (and use winegcc, producing WIN32 executables; I'm not sure whether this is what you want)
[2]: SCons is a very nice tool though
First step would be to generate Makefile out of vcproj file.
There are (obviously) some tools for that:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cross-platform/sln2mak.aspx
There is no easy way to do it. As others have suggested you can figure out how the build process works for this project (maybe by reading the build output in VS) and recreate that using your favorite linux build tool (scons, cmake, autotools etc.). The alternative is to use a converter tool. Aside from the below mentioned sln2mak, there is also winemaker. The docs for winemaker have a lot of old info like most linux tools docs but it can convert a .sln to a makefile. I am not sure about newer vs .sln files.
I am trying to open an existing C++ open-source library in Xcode to publish it with my own modification/additions. The library is Tesseract-OCR, which does not include a .xcodeproj file.
Since Xcode can function as an IDE, is it possible to open a bunch of files as a single project in Xcode? Is there an easy way to produce an Xcode project?
There are several ways you could do it, depending on the level of IDE integration you want. There's no direct way of importing a Makefile-based project into Xcode. You can create a project that builds via the Makefile, but you wouldn't get many of the benefits of using an IDE, since the editor features such as word completion rely on Xcode being able to parse the files in the project. You will be able to use the debugger though. To do this, create a new project and add a custom target with a script build phase that just calls down to Makefile.
If however the project you're building compiles very easily, ie without requiring a lot of macros to be set up, include paths, etc, then it may be simple to just create an empty project and merely add all source files to it. I've used this method extensively for building boost libraries. If this is a configure && make type project then you will probably have to run the configure step first, and ensure any top level config.h files are included in the project.
If the project has a complex makefile then it is likely to be an involved task to create a useful Xcode project
I realise you asked explicitly for Xcode, but in case you were actually trying to solve the problem of "I have existing C++ code which builds and runs fine from the command line, and I'd like to code and debug it in an IDE, what should I do?" my firm recommendation would be to avoid Xcode and go for Eclipse.
The reason is that as far as I can tell, Xcode has no way of ingesting the command line build environment and effectively requires you to recreate the make process inside Xcode from scratch. Fine for tiny projects, but anything with more than a few source files and it quickly becomes painful. Whereas in Eclipse everything is built around Makefiles. So in my case I got to the "step through code with working code completion" in Eclipse a lot quicker vs. never in Xcode. This of course could be because I'm an Xcode noob, but my 2c.
To create an Xcode project from an existing cmake project, you can run cmake -G Xcode. It produces some folders and files apart from the project file, so it might be better to create a folder for it first. For example:
mkdir -p build/xcode
cd build/xcode
cmake -G Xcode ../..
Xcode is a useable IDE for library creation.
Of course a good first step is to see if the one source code will build on its own with configure scripts that are included.
If not, it becomes a question of how many libraries you need to link in.
There are resources online (or at least there used to be) for using Xcode (or perhaps it's forerunner Product builder) for porting Unix projects to Mac.
Good tutorial at: http://www.macresearch.org/tutorial-introducing-xcode-30-organizer
Another good reference is Darwin Ports.
As for doing this on your own. You can build c++ based libraries in XCode. People do that every day. You can even use one of the Xcode templates to get you started.
However, library dev requires more experience with Xcode then say a simple Cocoa "Hello World" app.
The remaining questions will be assuring that the source code's dependencies are already built into the Mac's SDK. (Don't hold your breath for linking to MFC)
It's a general question... So it's a general answer.
In Xcode8,there is "Xcode->file->add files to...",then choose your files.If you want to add several files at a time,press "Cmd" when you are choosing.