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.
Related
I would like to start programming in OCaml. As I am a Windows user, I understand that it is preferred to do so using the OCaml plugin for Netbeans.
I have downloaded the aforementioned plugin from the following link: http://ocamlplugin.loki-a.com/ocamlplugin/updates/ . I have installed the plugin into Netbeans as instructed. I managed to open a project but even the sample "Hello World" won't run.
I then tried to install the OCaml IDE from here: http://ocamlplugin.loki-a.com/index.php?title=Main_Page#Download_2 , but it still wouldn't run anything.
I am not interested in working with Eclipse because that would include downloading Cygwin.
I would appreciate a simple solution. Thank you! :)
I would suggest OCaIDE under Eclipse, if you stick to Windows anyway.
But I don't understand your reluctancy to use cygwin, especially when there is such nice step-by-step tutorial for configuring cygwin for OcaIDE and Eclipse.
Another option, which I haven't tried but would strongly suggest you trying, is Sublime Text 2. It supports OCaml and is a very popular cross-platform text editor. But since I haven't tried it, I would not be able to provide you with details about it. Although it comes with a cost, you can evaluate it for free without time limit.
TypeRex has been my favourite for OCaml so far, and you can now use Emacs in Windows, so with some workaround in cygwin you can use TypeRex in Windows.
Another option is to use VirtualBox, install a normal linux distro and use Typerex+Emacs inside it. It is also not complicated, as it takes 1 hour to config at most.
The ocaml links that you gave have not been touched since 2009 (4 years ago). That probably means the odds of them running with the current NetBeans are equivalent to the proverbial sphere of solidified water in the Christian place of eternal theological punishment.
Since you are asking about running under Cygwin, it sounds like you want a Linux version of Eclipse as well. Eclipse runs quite well under Win7, at least, and under Mint (I use them under both) However, all my attempts to get ANY OCaml IDE running under either system have been borged (resistance is futile, and depends and capacitance anyway).
So, under Mint 15, emacs and vim (the old standards) work well as text editors. I wish I could suggest anything else.
Good luck!!!
By now, another option has appeared for Windows 10 users wanting to use OCaml: the Windows Subsystem for Linux.
Basically, what it does is that it allows you to run Bash and any non-GUI Linux program on your PC. Once installed, you can install OCaml and OPAM with apt-get and you're good to go.
As far as I am concerned, I use Windows 10 on my desktop PC, and I haven't had any inconvenience with WSL yet.
I personally use Merlin/... which is are plugins for emacs. But I can understand that you dont want to use emacs. I have been told that the support with Visual Studio Code is supposed to be quite good, especially when using it together with the builtin console. Also for smaller things there is Ocamltop but I have now idea how the Windows support is. In the end I suggest, using the Linux Shell on Windows as RichouHunter suggests.
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 am a primary windows developer with experience in C#, .NET, Visual C/C++. I want to lean C/C++ development in linux in order to create portable GUI applications which run on both Windows and Linux.
I have used Fedora in past (2005). Want your suggestions to know which is the best distribution currently to learn programming in linux.
You can't really go wrong with any of the major ones. Personally I use Debian, but Fedora and OpenSUSE are good choices as well.
I would also like to point out that you can use C# to create portable GUI applications. Have a look at Mono and Gtk#. I have developed quite a few Gtk# apps and they usually run flawlessly on Windows and Linux, with very little work on my part. It might not be a bad introduction to coding on Linux, as you will be able to use a familiar language.
Any modern Linux distribution will do, as they all includes (or makes it easy to install) GCC. To easily create portable GUI applications, I would recommend taking a look at Qt.
Since every distro worth its salt has a Development Package that includes gcc, g++ and gdb, it's really going to come down to the IDE you develop your code in. Eclipse is an excellent IDE for C & C++ which just happens to be written in java. So long story short, use whatever distro you are comfortable with, it really doesn't matter all that much.
There is none Distribution you couldn't use. If you want an easy distribution working almost out of the box. With a lot of things configured automatically i would suggest you use ubuntu.
If you like to do more things on your own I'd tend to debian. Anyway you could simply code with qt and use the linux box for debugging only.
Slackware, ArchLinux or CentOS.
Stay away from Ubuntu and its derivatives, you will spend more time messing with packet manager apt-get than doing code. If you choose Debian-derivatives you will spend time wondering why your programs dont work only to find out you need packetname-devel also (!)
A base Slackware install should be enough to get you started, if you would like to keep having the latest programs, use ArchLinux.
You wrote "to create portable GUI applications which run on both Windows and Linux" - I suggest that you consider Qt (used to be from Trolltech now part of Nokia). http://qt.nokia.com/products/
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 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/