I am doing some C++ cross development - been doing that for a while on Windows and recently started on Unix.
I suppose what I am after is to simplify Unix development experience - I have a local windows box I do development on, and a remote Solaris box which I use to compile and test code on unix environment.
What I do now - I develop, compiled and test code on Windows (VC++) and once it is done, I move code to Solaris box using Filezilla over SSH. I also use Putty to connect to Solaris box and execute shell commands.
Since I am quite new to unix development - I suppose what I do is by far not optimal and the tools/technics I use not optimal too.
Can you recommend me a better tools - how to move code around more easily and may be a replacement for Putty (which looks quite outdated anyway).
Thanks.
If by any chance you want to run the same C++ IDE on both Windows and Solaris, I recommend taking a look at Code::Blocks. Also, as I suggested to Charles, running an X server on the Windows box gives you a lot more flexibility than running Putty or similar.
Is there any reason that You can't test software on Solaris using Virtual Machine? They can share folders so there is no need to uploading code to remote machine.
Second: use svn or git or mercurial. In one machine You check in your code, on other you checkout plus You have history of changes. No need to use Filezilla over SSH.
edit:
Also, I think that it would be good to use cmake (or scons - but I don't used it) to generating build files. For example - cmake generates Makefiles or project files for Your IDE, so You don't need to maintaint few different files that build Your code on different platforms.
You might want to look into Samba, so you can work directly with the Windows file explorer to move files to and from Windows/Unix environments, rather than using FTP.
But for UNIX shell access via Windows, you really can't beat Putty.
I recommend mercurial.
Just use a version control system such as Subversion or Mercurial. I strongly recommend the latter because it's distributed so you don't need to have a server per say and you can work offline. Every time you want to shove your Windows code to the unix machine you just need to do 'hg push' and off you go. To sort out the build you can with good old Make or just use SCons (again I prefer the latter because it comes with the power of Python).
I actually, very recently developed a cross platform project in C++ using wxWidgets and GraphicsMagick. I wrote it all in Mac OS X and then compiled both in Windows and Linux. One thing I'd like to point out is that GCC seems to be more pedantic about compile warnings and errors than Microsoft's compiler so if you grow to like the Unix environment I'd recommend to develop there and then compile in Windows (maybe even using a VMWare image).
Instead of moving your source code around manually, consider using a version control system. Not necessarily a distributed VCS such as git or mercurial, but you should use version control nonetheless.
Sooner or later, you'll need to use a debugger on the Unix machine, and if you prefer using a graphic debugger, you should install a local X server on your Windows machine.
IMHO vim is quite good editor ;)
gcc, nm, ld for compilation/build/diagnosis
makefile for builds
gdb as debugger, if you prefer GUI check ddd (if you want to stick
with Visual Studio for debugging
check www.vsbridge.com or
www.wingdb.com - they both
depends on gdb as back-end)
other commercial debugger for Unixes
is TotalView
(http://www.roguewave.com/products/totalview.aspx the price is
high, although they have their own
engine instead of gdb)
CVS, SVN as source control
If you want to edit files in VisualStudio you can use e.g. Samba as "transparent file system" ;)
By the way VirtualBox may be very helpful (I debug (Open)Solaris or Linux as VBox machines very frequently).
ps
yet another environment you may be interested in is Magic C++ www.magicunix.com/
Related
MY code will be deployed on FreeBSD. Would I be able to code using VS2010 in Win7? can this be done on Linux using gcc? or do I need to have freebsd installed on my laptop.
I plan on buying a new ultrabook and not sure FreeBSD will support the drivers or wireless. What the best practice here? VMs?
Thanks mods.
You can just write code in Visual Studio, however you will not be able to compile and run it in Windows, unless you are only using standard libraries.
To compile and test your code you need a FreeBSD somewhere.
I have never used FreeBSD on a laptop, so I can't say if dualbooting it with Windows is a good idea.
The best thing would be if you had access to a test server with the same configuration as your production server (i.e. same FreeBSD version, same packages, etc.). Then you could write code in VS, check it into a repository, SSH to the server, update a local copy of the source there and build.
If that is not an option, I recommend setting up a virtual environment. Download VirtualBox, obtain FreeBSD and install it on the VM. Set up port forwarding for SSH and then the process is pretty much the same as with a separate server. You may have to make some additional tweaks depending on the nature of the work you'll be doing.
Here is a setup I have used in cases where I am not using any OS specific library.
On your Windows 7 machine develop your application as usual without using MFC/ATL etc. If you are linking to external libraries/APIs you will have to use one which is portable across Windows and Linux (e.g. Boost libraries). Do not use pre-compiled headers (stdfax.h) or any other option which is Windows specific.
Get VirtualBox and install your favorite OS (FreeBSD in this case) and your favorite tool chain (gcc clang)
Share the disk/folder you are developing your app in the Windows file system so that it is visible in VirtualBox. In Ubuntu they end up in the /media/sf_Folder.
Compile in FreeBSD in VirtualBox. You will need to have an alternative make system setup in parallel in addition to the stuff Visual Studio creates. Make sure you do not have any conflicts in the way the directories used by the build system (to store object files etc.) between FreeBSD and Windows. You can try out this http://code.google.com/p/make-it-so/ to convert your VS solutions to gcc makefiles.
This way you can continue to use your favorite IDE and also rebuild on your target *ix OS on the same machine.
gcc + gvim + ( ( ctags with omnicppcomplete ) or ( clang with clang_complete ) and STL + Boost.
We are moving our development for C to C++, but all build servers run Linux and development happens on Windows machines. Our C editor does not do C++ very well so we are looking at alternatives.
The code itself lives on the build server connected by \\opt\code... type link in Windows.
We need SSH as that is the normal connection to the build servers. We would like an integrated solution for errors/warnings being able to opened in the editor. We do not care about running the code.
Are there any free editors that can execute builds over SSH?
Thanks.
NetBeans allows to build over ssh. We are using this from Linux development computers to linux build machines. I am not sure if this is possible from Windows to Linux. Here is a tutorial: Tutorial
This link suggest this should be possible using plink and any editor that can run plink as a compile and capture the resulting stdio and stderr output.
You can use Visual Slick Edit it has a scripting language which can be used to spawn commands. Btw, if your build is linux based I suggest you to edit on linux (there're various programmers editors there available for free).
In windows almost every editor worth being calling editor has the power to manage builds (often via make), so even VIM or Emacs can be productivity choices (yeah I'm not a big fans of IDEs, my actual editor is VIM with a good tons of vimscripts and yeah, I've got code navigation, error browsing and the speed of light while typing - and the same is possible with emacs).
Ultraedit is another editor able to Edit file over ftp (and maybe over SSH), but I doubt it can spawn a remote make and fetch results.
If you're not reliyng on builds, but just compiling, maybe is worth checking the Cygwin porject and see if you can arrange a compilation under Windows, then for the build manually resort to the Linux box, this would probably remove the compilation problem (every programmer will compile on his box, and only builds (compile+link) would be left on the linux box.
You might use X forwarding and run any linux IDE on the Linux side, while operating it via Windows machines. See http://www.math.umn.edu/systems_guide/putty_xwin32.html for an example.
Or even setup a VNC remote desktop connection.
I never tried this, but it looks like that using Code::Blocks and Xming you can do this.
Here is tutorial http://wiki.codeblocks.org/index.php?title=Using_Xming_for_remote_compilation
You could try using Dokan SSHFS to mount the code as a drive on each Windows machine. Then developers are free to use whatever IDE they choose.
I'm developing C++ apps for Linux, but my workstation is Windows 7. I've read that Visual Studio is the strongest C++ IDE for Windows, but I actually want to execute the code on Ubuntu and be able to use a more graphically pleasing debugger than gdb, although the functionality of gdb is pretty good. I'm really happy with valgrind as well, but again, I'd like to be able to leverage that in an IDE in windows.
I currently use QtCreator as my C++ IDE and I edit the files over a samba mount to the linux box. I use Putty to run the Linux commands. I use git as my source control system, gcc as my compiler and cmake as my build system. I like QtCreator, but as I have it configured, I'm not taking advantage of code-completion or debugging.
The closest thing I've seen is CodeWarrior. It allows for executing code on remote embedded systems and a full debugger. Has anyone ever used this for general app development on Ubuntu?
Is QtCreator the right IDE for me? Is there something else that I can do to configure it so that it'll give me those rich IDE features that I'm looking for? Or should I look to another IDE? Also, are there some tools that I've neglected to mention that would make C++ development easier on a Linux box from a Windows workstation?
Thanks in advance...
It is not clear, you run QtCreator on windows?
If so, you can run QtCreator in Linux,
plus install nxserver on Linux,
and nxclient on windows (http://www.nomachine.com/).
So you run nxclient on windows, login to linux,
and work on linux, in compare with virtual machines,
you get more prefomance.
Use VirtualBox and linux virtual machines?
X Windows.
You could install Cygwin to run an X11 server on your Windows 7 desktop, then run an X11 graphical IDE like QtCreator on your Linux server that renders directly to your Cygwin Windows 7 desktop. I actually tried setting this up with Code::Blocks on openSUSE and Cygwin on Windows 7 just a few weeks ago because I'm in the same situation you're in. It works... kind of. There are weird intermittent errors.
Your scenario is exactly the scenario that the X Windows system was designed for, and it is awesome in concept, but the actual X11 protocol design and implementation is, I gather, old and pretty hairy. I have very little experience with X, but the people who do have lots of experience with it seem to complain about it a lot, and I suppose there are good reasons for that. Too bad, because it would be wonderful if there were a technology like X Windows that worked. AJAX is basically a cheap hack for solving the same kind of problem that X Windows tried to solve... running a remote application with local rendering of a rich GUI.
I gave up on X and I still do the same thing you do: I have putty and Samba-mounted files that I edit with Visual Studio. Visual Studio is the best text editor I've ever used. All the other Visual Studio IDE features are gravy.
There's some solutions :
VmWare : not free but really good
Virtualbox : free but less powerfull than VmWare
KVM/Qemu : Free but less powerfull than VmWare
I'm taking an Introduction to C++ this semester, so I need to set up development environments in both my Windows and Ubuntu partitions (I switch between them). I was planning to use GCC in both environments for consistency and because I plan to do my serious C++ developing in Linux with GCC.
It appears that installing MSYS and MinGW is the best way to use GCC and replicate my Linux dev environment. However, just setting up MSYS and MinGW in Windows appears to be a long and arduous process, and I'm imagining that I will have limitations or compatibility problems in the future.
Do the benefits of setting up a MSYS Linux-like development environment on Windows outweigh the costs?
Will I be able to use all the libraries that I could if I were using Visual C++?
I think you're going about this the wrong way - I would actually suggest you use Visual Studio on the Windows environment, rather than going out of your way to setup GCC. It's a benefit, not a drawback, to run your code on multiple compilers from multiple vendors.
Both GCC and Visual Studio are highly conformant (at least recent versions). You won't have any trouble with standard libraries and going between them, and if you do have trouble, it's probably an issue in your code.
I've always installed cygwin on Windows. To me, Windows is completely unusable without it. I've never really run into problems with DLLs mentioned above. However, I've also rarely used the GCC compiler, so I don't know how it compares to Visual Studio for general programming. For anything with a Windows GUI or Dot Net based, I would definitely stick with Visual Studio.
If you stick with the automated installer, MinGW installation is not painful at all. Unfortunately, that currently gives you GCC 3.4.5, rather than the newer 4.4.0 release that they also provide sans installer.
In reality, for course work, 3.4.5 will be just fine, I imagine.
Use gcc on Ubuntu and Visual Studio on Windows to get exposure to both. This is an intro course so Windows, Linux, Visual Studio, gcc are just the tools you need to master C++ and data structures. Mastering the tools will come over time and they will change.
I personally develop for windows using a pure Linux environment using mingw-gcc on Linux to cross-compile for windows.
I put a tutorial on how to set it up for OpenSSL/Qt4 # http://www.limitlessfx.com
Do you do this to get .exes or just to be able to work on both OSes?
If you feel more comfortable with GCC than VC, setting up Mingw/Cygwin is possible but doesn't give you any new functionality (beside .exes). Instead, I suggest you turn one of your partitions into a virtual machine - this way you can have both OSes open at once! (My personal choice is Windows inside Linux, YMMV.)
The benefit of developing on Linux is ready availability of tons of development tools and libraries. Also, big builds are noticably faster.
Since you said "I plan to do my serious C++ developing in Linux with GCC", VC++ may not be what you really want. Many libraries just don't compile well in VC++. Try some yourself. Instead, consider running Linux on Windows. There are several ways to do this:
Use PuTTY to connect to a Linux machine, and use Xming to see the UI windows. I would only do this over a LAN.
Consider coLinux. You can run Linux under Windows and just shut-off Linux when you are done.
Consider other virtualization options like VMWare to run Linux. Pretty much the same as coLinux, but it might be easier to setup.
You may even want to install Linux directly on your machine. You can always use tools like Wine or VMWare to run Windows if you need it.
I am trying to setup a development environment for Linux C++ application. Because I'm limited to my laptop (vista) which provides essential office applications, I want to program and access email, word at the same time.
I'd prefer a local Windows IDE. SSH to a company linux server and using VI doesn't seem productive to me. Even using some IDE installed on the linux server doesn't seem good to me, because I can't do the work at home.
So does Eclipse CDT + MinGW work for me, or is there any other choice?
Thanks.
ZXH
Why not install a Linux virtual machine on your laptop, in VMware or similar? That way you can test while you're developing too.
You can also try http://cygwin.com/
Is it a GUI app? And do you have to target Linux specifically? If not, Qt (http://trolltech.com/) may be something that you can use. It would allow you to more or less develop your whole application on Windows, and then spend a few hours on a linux machine getting the whole thing ported...
Qt is the best choice. I develop with tis tool for a long time. And you can develop with the same ide : QtCreator and the same framework : Qt on MacOS, Linux based or Windows plateform...
Moreover, specifically on Linux, Qt is well integrated with Kdevelop !
If you have Visual Studio, which I feel is an excellent IDE, you can try to set it up to use GCC/G++. I've done this before, back in the Visual Studio 6 days. As long as you aren't using any Windows-specific libraries and write portable C++, you can compile and test on Windows, then periodically ensure that the code also compiles properly for Linux.
Another approach, one that I actually prefer, is to host your source and make files on the Linux box, share the files through Samba, then use your Windows IDE/text editor to edit those files. Then, you can do the compiling through an SSH terminal. Sure, you'd lose the convenience of being able to compile through your IDE, but at least you wouldn't have to muck around getting the compiler set up on Windows.
If you have a linux server available to you, you could also use NX to log in graphically, and use a Linux IDE there like Code::Blocks, or shudder Eclipse. Of course, there's nothing unproductive about shelling in and using VIM. I find it's a good way to shake out the IDE-induced cobwebs every now and again. Happy coding however you end up doing so!
I use (and recommend) Netbeans for C/C++ Development together with Cygwin to develop POSIX applications on Windows that will run on Linux/Solaris later on.
It is pretty easy to setup as long as you stick to the stable version of Cygwin.
I was in a similar position 2-3 years ago and tried several approaches, but the only one that really worked wor me was vim+ssh (+gdb, make, svn, etc). But again, I use vim even for Windows development.
This slideshow (PDF) walks through how to set up a cross compiler from Windows to Linux.