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Closed 9 years ago.
Saludos a todos en stackoverflow.com!!
So... I'm a C++ newbie currently taking the subject of Data Structures, and I want to consult something with you guys:
Since I started studying Systems Engineering, I've been using the last version of Dev-C++ for all my programming projects. It has done it's job well so far, but it has a FATAL flaw... trying to debug your code in it it's just... awfully painful!! Everytime you activate the debug mode you have to cross your fingers and hope it doesn't crash in your face just before the variable you are watching even changes.
Then, I though about using Visual-C++ from Microsoft, as it is free too; however, I asked my teacher and told me not to use it in the course, as it is not standard (compiled programs in it will only work for Windows); we are required to make code that can be compiled both in a Windows and Linux environment, and once compiled in any, being able to use the application on both environments.
So people, I want you to please give me advice: Which C++ compiling software out there has a strong and/or stable debugging mode, implements the standard compiler (is it called g++, by the way??), and it's hopefully free???
Thanks for your attention. Gracias y hasta luego ^_^ (BTW, happy first post!!! ^o^)
There is an implementation of g++ and GDB ( the Gnu Debugger ) for windows called Mingw that works very well. Though since I'm guessing you're also looking for a graphical IDE / debugger, I'd point you at Eclipse. The C Development Tools for eclipse include an excellent interface to the Mingw build tools and GDB. Also, on your comment about a compiled program being used on both Windows and *nix, this is not possible as far as I know.
It depends what you mean by 'standard'. You're going to have to compile your code on linux and windows anyway. There is no way to create and executable that will run on both. Just use VS to compile and debug on windows, then make sure it also compiles and runs under GCC on linux.
I think he just wants you to use the same compiler on both, so you don't have to deal with differences between compilers. I think that's good for you. Writing code that can compile on multiple compilers is important because it shows you what parts of the standard really are standard.
Code::Blocks - it's free, it's cross-platform, it's pretty good. You can download a package consisting of the CB IDE, the MinGW C++ compiler and the gdb debugger. Installation is very straightforward.
It sounds like you're asking for an IDE ( Integrated Dev Environment ).
Eclipse might be good for you. It's supported on both Windows and Linux.
http://www.eclipse.org/cdt/
In terms of compilers themselves GCC is your best bet. It is a compiler in the purest sense of the word though it doesn't have a native interface to it.
I would be looking at finding a good environment to develop in that could attach to it.
Straying from that my personal preference in IDE's right now is eclipse, but that is really a personal thing.
If you use only the standards features of C++, you can use Visual Studio Express C++. Your are not obligated to use the windows only extension of the compiler: MFC, ATL, Wizards, etc.
But if you want to make something portable then trying to target both compilers (GCC and VS) is really a better exercise anyway.
Also recently Nokia released a new multiplataform ide QtCreator, it is a first version but at least it deserve to be taken in consideration.
MinGW is pretty good as #Colfax state. Consider using ddd with Cygwin which makes using gdb somewhat easier. See this SO question
But wait...isn't Qt 4.5 released as LGPL now making that a great free tool? See here
As a linux guy, I think the best experience comes with GVIM as editor and Mingw as
programming environment. GCC is the standard, but LLVM-GCC is very promising and comes with a Mingw build ready for use in windows.
I use DevC++ from when i was starting learn to programm. And i love it. Just can't change to another compiler, so i use wxDevC++ a still maintained version of DevC++.
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It needs to have good code completion support, debugger, and a nice way to browse code (click to go to documentation).
Since I got spoiled by Java IDEs (Eclipse), it would be cool if it supported refactoring, reference search and some form of on the fly compilation, but maybe I'm asking too much.
So far I tried Eclipse C++ plugin, Qt Creator and Code Blocks. Eclipse plugin feels sluggish, Code Blocks has much worse completion then Qt Creator and Qt Creator is great for Qt stuff, but kinda hard to use for free form projects.
What are other options and first hand experience with them, since trying something for few hours and using something on a daily basis are two different things?
I have been using Code Lite for some time now. It provides support for auto completion. It has a code explorer and outline, though I find myself using "find resource" to open files. It has a plugin for UnitTest++ and some primitive refactoring capabilities.
link text
I'm very happy with Eclipse. It's not fast, but if you get a good enough workstation, it runs just fine, and considering how much your time is worth, a good workstation is actually pretty cheap. It also has a feature list a mile long (good features, not just bullet points), which I tried to summarize in this answer. It's also being actively developed; CDT 5.0 is a huge improvement over 4.0, and the next version (due out this month) adds even more nifty features (like syntax highlighting that can distinguish between overloaded and non-overloaded operators).
With some tweaking, you can turn VIM into a very good IDE. You can enable tabs for multiple source files in a single buffer, code navigation, and even auto-completion. The example below is for python, but the ideas apply to C++ as well.
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/guides/2009/05/vim-made-easy-how-to-get-your-favorite-ide-features-in-vim.ars
Use EMACS. M + / gives you all possible completion from the opened buffers. It has got nice integration with GDB as well.
I use plan9port's Acme. It only does a few things itself, but provides a very good interface to let any command-line program process any text from any of the tiled windows. So, instead of building all functionality into the editor (eg Emacs), it outsources just about all of it to command-line programs---actually more numerous and written in languages better suited to the tasks at hand than the editor's language (even Lisp).
http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch13s02.html is "A Tale of Five Editors" (read Wily as Acme), from The Art of Unix Programming by Eric S. Raymond.
QTCreator rawks and has a great set of libs that are also cross platform.
recently I did some research for a good C++ Crossplatform IDE:
* Eclipse Galileo with CDT Plugin
* NetBeans 6.7 (which is also the base for the SunStudio IDE)
* CodeBlocks 8.02
* CodeLite 2.x
After all I have decided to use CodeLite 2.x.
Please see this permalink for a Summary: ide discussion
I'm a fan of 'Code::Blocks'
Code::Blocks is a free C++ IDE built to meet the most demanding needs of
its users. It is designed to be very
extensible and fully configurable.
Finally, an IDE with all the features
you need, having a consistent look,
feel and operation across platforms. - (the site)
Their latest release has been amazing... For a while it was difficult to get it since they only had the RC on their main site. Now that it's been released proper (not just dev snapshots), its much easier to get.
built in Astyle, code completion, and multi-compiler support, all cross platform w/ wxwidgets.
Anjuta might have Windows port:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anjuta
You can use the Ultimate++ framework It is a C++ cross platform framework with a great IDE you can develop visual UI applications
please visit http://www.ultimatepp.org
SlickEdit is quite good and available for most platforms.
I've recently discovered NetBeans for C++. In the past C++ support in NetBeans has been lacking, but the 6.5 version has improved greatly. If you setup your project following guidelines on the NetBeans site, then code completion and debugging work well in Linux with g++ & gdb. I've not tried using NetBeans for C++ on Windows, but I don't think there would be an issue using DevC++, Ming or cygwin with g++ for compilation.
NEdit along with this package:
http://code.google.com/p/nedit-macro-kit/
It's cross platform, cross language and customization-friendly.
I'm currently giving Geany a try on gnu/linux, and so far I'm loving it! :]
I would otherwise be using Netbeans for C++, but there seems to be a few nasty bugs with their most recent release. Geany gets the job done, at least for now.
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Closed 10 years ago.
Since you 'should' learn C/C++ and as part of 'learn as much languages as possible', i decided to learn C++ in depth.
My OS is Windows and my question is should i re-install Linux as a dual boot to learn C++ on Linux?
Do i miss something if I develop in C++ only on the Windows platform?
(possible duplicate: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1128050/best-operating-system-for-c-development-and-learning)
Doesn't really matter what platform you write your code on.
If you want to verify that your code is portable, you could install cygwin and gcc as well as visual studio.
Then you could compile with both compilers without having to dualboot
If your goal is simply to learn C++, it doesn't matter what platform you use because C++, as a general purpose programming language, is not platform-specific. You can learn standard C++ on any platform with a decent C++ compiler.
If you want to practice / test on Linux, you can simply create a virtual machine, for example with VirtualBox.
Do i miss something if I develop in
C++ only on the Windows platform?
Valgrind.
Not really if you don't use OS specific calls or libs.
If you are asking about IDEs, compilers etc, that's a metter of your preferences about it.
First of all, learning "as many languges as possible" is less important than learning at least one programming language in depth first.
In my view, you should learn programming on the platform than you are most familiar with. If you are not familiar with Linux and it's features yet, it's no use to start learning programming with it because you wouldn't know what to do. You can also expect the MS documentation to be a bit more consistent than the Linux docs.
Some more things to consider:
You should get a ready-to-use development environment like Eclipe or MS Visual C++ (Windows). Getting the "standard way" with text editor, makefiles, etc. to work is too hard for a beginner, especially on Windows.
If you are going to use .NET on Windows, you have to be aware that the language is slightly different from standard C++. The same is true for C++ Builder, etc. If you are using Visual C++ or an environment based on the GNU compiler, you can program standard C++.
You should try to use C++ standard APIs and libraries like the STL, not MS-proprietary libs, except if you want to stick to Windows.
As long as you stick with cross-platform libraries (e.g. the C++ Standard Library, the Boost C++ Libraries, and the Qt Framework), instead of using platform-specific calls (e.g. the WIN32 API), and also assuming you use a cross-platform build system (e.g. CMake), instead of a platform-specific system (e.g. Visual Studio), then it won't matter. That said, it is much easier to setup a C/C++ development environment on Linux than it is to setup the equivalent development environment on Windows. And, since Linux will not include the "windows.h" header, you will be less likely to invoke Windows-specific features if you develop on Linux.
I recommend that you stick with Windows for a while until you gain some familiarity with the language. Then you can switch to Linux if you like. I say this because on Windows you can use Visual Studio (the Express Edition can be downloaded for free). Its user friendliness will ease some of the pain caused by the initial hurdles when learning C++.
Eventually you should also learn the Linux/Unix way by using gcc, makefiles and an advanced editor like vi/emacs/whatever.. However, this by itself is already challenging stuff, so save it for later and learn C++ first.
If, in the process of learning C and C++, you want to see how the libraries and the system actually work, Linux is the obvious choice as you can take a look at the system's entire source code.
IMHO, that can be quite instructive.
Since with C++ alone you will not be doing much, you should use both OSs (and more) to understand what is available to you in terms of libraries, compilers and IDEs (even development philosophies vary from OS to OS), this is not really important on your first steps into C++, at that stage it is more important which compiler/IDE you select...
Zed above rightly points you out the virtual machine option, VirtualBox is great.
Personally I would advise to avoid using Visual Studio as your first IDE/Compiler, it will add increased complexity and attempt to brainwash you into .net at every chance it gets.
It will also make it hard for you later on to move to other setups...
Start with a simple text editor (Notepad++ on windows) and by using the command line for compilations.
Same question as I asked myself before started learning. That is should I have to have a dual boot? No. If you have installed VC++ with Visual studio you can use Visual Studio provided compiler and is easier to use also. Apart from this you can download and install Cygwin and make sure to check the gcc and its related components. You can launch CYGWIN just like your dos but it provides you UNIX environment to work with inside Windows environment. then just cd to the folder which contain .cpp, and compile using UNIX commands. Simple as that. Happy coding... (For the CPP enthusiasts who land here)...
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I'm aspiring to work in real-time 3D graphics. I work almost exclusively in C++, with a healthy smattering of win32. Realistically, do I have any sane alternatives?
You can use the MSVC compiler without the IDE. That's probably your best bet. It's a good compiler, and it is the de facto standard for Windows development.
There is definitely nothing wrong with ditching the IDE and simply using the compiler.
I believe the MSVC compiler can be used from the Code::Blocks IDE with no problems.
Alternatively, invoking the compiler from the command-line is a tried and true approach too.
Eclipse: http://www.eclipse.org/
Code::Blocks is pretty cool: http://www.codeblocks.org/
Depends...
Cygwin/Mingwin gives you a compiler. Qt or wxWidgets gives you a GUI toolkit that's easy to use and both are portable.
I agree with the question though. Visual Studio is a pig. Its debugger is pretty nice, but the rest is a pig to work with (particularly coming from a OSS background where the tools don't generally try to lock you in).
You could also look at nmake and calling the VC++ compiler tools directly from the command line.
We use VC++ as a compiler / linker but use Jam to drive the builds. The actual Visual Studio is only used as a debugger. The benefit is that once we set up Jam to build a project in Windows, it takes minimal effort (frequently none) to get it working for Unix.
The Zeus IDE works just fine as a MSVC alternative. It can even import MSVC project and solution files.
A bit late to the party, but I'd like to add that in 2018 there finally begins to show up a viable alternative that is good enough to promise emancipation from the monopoly of VS on Windows C++ development:
Sublime Text as editor, with the following plugins:
EasyClangComplete, a decent (like, just working) replacement for Intellisense;
[optionally] Clang Format, for much more flexible source formatting experience than MS would ever come up with;
Clang-cl as a wrapper around Clang compiler aimed for maximum MSVC compatibility.
Unfortunately, Microsoft Build Tools are still needed for standard library headers, but the download size is nothing compared to the whole VS behemoth. The upside is that Clang-cl picks them up automagically and Build Tools somehow don't mandate that you let their executables go online to sign in and activate your free license yet!
Setting this all up to a working configuration is a bit more complicated than slapping together a VS project/solution, but it's totally worth it. As a bonus, setting things up manually might give you a better understanding of what goes on under the hood of an IDE.
One thing to miss might be the superb VS debugger... Well, if you're ready to break habits, the open source x64dbg might come to the rescue, ability to view and step through source code via .pdb files included (and yes, Clang can generate them now!).
Update: As of 2019, a much better and future-proof alternative to EasyClangComplete is using Clangd via LSP plugin.
Absolutely, but it's just a lot easier to use Microsoft's IDE to develop for a Microsoft operating system. When in Rome...
Eclipse is a good alternative.
The Code::Blocks IDE comes with the MinGW C++ compiler and support for wxWidgits. The IDE is pretty minimalist which may or may not be what you are looking for - I really like it.
Dev-C++ I have found very useful, and free :)
Very possible, Qt is your friend. Qt Creator is in RC stage too so something to look forward to. Until then you can use it with something like Code::Blocks. Code::Blocks itself is a great environment alone, and also has a lot of support for wxWidgets. If you're just looking for an IDE change, as previously mentioned, Code::Blocks can use compilers from other IDE's as well.
-John
SlickEdit (or a number of other editors that support ctags or something similar) makes for a pretty decent 'IDE'.
You can use these editors with makefiles (or other build tools) to drive pretty much whatever compiler you want (MVCS, mingw, Comeau, Digital Mars, whatever).
A couple employers ago, that's exactly what we did. We used MS compilers driven by makefiles and the main editor used was SlickEdit. We used the Debugging Tools for Windows package for debugging (a lot of what we did was kernel-mode). Worked out pretty well.
Wascana Desktop Developer is a distribution of Eclipse CDT configured specifically for developing on Windows.
I would recommend giving Notepad++, MSBuild, and the Windows SDK a look over. You could also use XBuild, but that is more MONO specific. Mind you, MSBuild, and XBuild are just automation tools, so you'd be spending more time with Windows SDK.
I'm sure to receive a lot of flak for this, but I find C++Builder to be a much easier IDE/compiler to develop Windows C++ apps with than MSVC. It may not be the cheapest solution, or have all the same bells+whistles, or be the most language-compliant (its 32bit compiler does not support C++11 yet, but its 64bit compiler does), but you can't really beat its visual UI designer and 3rd party component market.
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Closed 11 years ago.
What is the best C++ IDE for a *nix envirnoment? I have heard the C/C++ module of Eclipse is decent as well as Notepad++ but beyond these two I have no real idea. Any thoughts or comments?
On Ubuntu, some the IDEs that are available in the repositories are:
Kdevelop
Geany
Anjuta
There is also:
Eclipse (Recommended you don't install from repositories, due to issues with file/folder permissions)
Code::blocks
And of course, everyone's favourite text-based editors:
vi/vim
emacs
Its true that vim and emacs are very powerful tools, but the learning curve is very steep..
I really don't like Eclipse that much, I find it buggy and a bit too clunky.
I've started using Geany as a bare-bones but functional and usable IDE. It has a basic code-completion feature, and is a nice, clean [Gnome] interface.
Anjuta I tried for a day, didn't like it at all. I didn't find it as useful as Geany.
Kdevelop and code::blocks get a bunch of good reviews, but I haven't tried them. I use gnome, and I'm yet to see a KDE app that looks good in gnome (sorry, I'm sure its a great program).
If only bloodshed dev-c++ was released under linux. That is a fantastic (but windows-only) program. You could always run it under Wine ;)
To a degree, it comes down to personal preference. My advice is to investigate Kdevelop, Geany and code::blocks as a starting point.
As a programmer who has been writing code under linux for many years, I simply cannot seem to move away from using Vim for writing code.
Once you learn it, and learn some of its more advanced features (Code Folding, how to use ctags, how to work with multiple buffers effectively, etc) moving to another editor is very hard - as everything else seems to be missing features that you're used to.
The only other editor with a superset of vim's features is emacs. I highly recommend learning one or the other - and if you have questions, don't hesitate to ask here or in #emacs or #vim on irc.freenode.net - there's a very large and helpful community that will help you learn what extensions or commands best suit the software editing problems that you're facing.
[Edit: A comment noted that "vim isn't an IDE", I agree. I don't like the IDE moniker because it means a gui with a project manager and a bunch of drop down boxes. I like to use the terminology "Good Tools". See Ted Leung's writings on the matter]
I would recommend CodeBlocks.
Highlights:
Open Source! GPLv3, no hidden costs.
Cross-platform. Runs on Linux, Mac, Windows (uses wxWidgets).
Written in C++. No interpreted languages or proprietary libs needed.
Extensible through plugins
Compiler:
Multiple compiler support:
GCC (MingW / GNU GCC)
MSVC++
Digital Mars
Borland C++ 5.5
Open Watcom
...and more
I'm surprised noone has mentioned Qt Creator, as it's available in most repositories, quite small in size and yet does most things I need very well.
I just use Emacs.
Emacs is a fantastic, stay-out-of-my-way-but-be-able-to-do-everything kind of IDE. See this other related question: Using Emacs as an IDE
My vote is KDevelop (I wish I had more points so I can "vote up", so I could just agree with others indirectly than comment).
I've been using Eclipse for about couple years now for personal use, convincing myself that "since IBM donated it, it must be good", but then I've discovered KDevelop and never turned back. Because I'm quite spoiled with Microsoft Visual Studio for professional use, thus KDevelop felt the most comfortable to me.
I want to enjoy programming as a hobby, not spend time looking up what ctrl-k-k and ctrl-k-b does. Like others has mentioned, whatever "feels right" to them is the best IDE. For me, KDevelop feels the most comfortable because I can concentrate on coding (I could probably remap the keys to other IDE's to make it feel like VS, but as mentioned, I rather invest my time coding, which is more fun).
KDevelop is nice, especially if you run KDE. It supports many languages, as an added bonus. I've found its embedded terminal really useful.
If you're coming from Windows & Visual Studio, you might find Code::Blocks meets your expectations.
That was my experience; I tried a few others first, but they all seemed to expect me to do a lengthy tutorial before I could start doing anything interesting - and with a dozen IDEs to try, that could take days.
With Code::Blocks there were no hoops to jump through, and very little mandatory cruft to learn before I could be productive. I still prefer Visual Studio, but Code::Blocks can open my Visual Studio projects, and it doesn't seem to want me to waste any time, so it's the winningmost *nix IDE for me.
I use the NetBeans C++ plugin and it's superb. I come from a Visual Studio background and the Netbeans project management is very similar. I tried KDevelop but found it a little flaky (this was 12 months ago, so it is probably better now).
I also struggled with dependencies using KDevelop - i.e. where a program requires a raft of libs to be built first - but Netbeans made this simple.
The only complaint is that being a Java app, it isn't particularly fast - very noticeable when running under VMWare.
Simply put, Netbeans. You have to try it out. It's so good. It's much better than Eclipse with the CDT plugin.
Netbeans has gotten some pretty good reviews for its C++ support: http://www.netbeans.org/features/cpp/
I've never used Netbeans or Eclipse for C++ development, but it's worth looking at.
I was a VisualStudio + VA-X user before I switched to ubuntu, and needed good auto completion and function navigation features in any IDE.
I have tried Netbeans,Eclipse CDT,CodeBlocks,Geany,Anjuta, KDevelop and finally settled for KDevelop since that was the closest I could get to VS+VA-X.
Eclipse & NetBeans are too heavy & sluggish for my taste. Most of the other IDEs have buggy/incomplete/dumb auto completion & other features; or they want to take control of your code and needs to be imported into projects; or they put 101 files in your source folder. Only KDevelop allowed me to have a simple link to my src folder and let me work. auto completion is not brilliant, but better than the others.
KDevelop doesn't blend well with my Gnome, but I can live with it ;)
I really like CodeLite. Check out it's feature page.
Personally, I agree with the kDevelop crowd as well. Eclipse felt a bit bulky and mildly unstable. Something about kDeveloper just always feel right.
Ultimate++ [http://www.ultimatepp.org/index.html]
[edit]
It does have it's own C++ class libs (as Hernan points out), but nothing stops you from using any other class libs like the SDL, or you can roll your own. You can even use boost if you like, but I must say I find some of the supplied classes & techniques to be more useful.What I appreciate most is it's brilliant integration with the debugger and very complete context-sensitive editor. It uses the standard compiler & debugger (gcc, g++, gdb) on Linux and the MS compiler/debugger on that platform.The only (very small) gripe I have is the home-made names for projects (called Nest's & so forth). That is unnecessary and may even be off-putting to serious developers, but they are only names & I find I can easily ignore it.
I asked this question before to experience Linux users and they always say Vim and automake. I use Vim as my default editor in Linux and after a while it becomes intuitive. I learned it by working through some small examples while learning C++ so I could learn both at the same time.
At my old job we used SlickEdit for C++ development under Debian. It's cross-platform and quite powerful.
It's not free, though.
The problem with most IDEs is that they want to have a certain degree of control on how the project is organized, and this could be a problem if you have to work on that project with other people. In my experience this leads to two series of related problems:
If you start a project in a particular IDE, they will layout for you a particular directory structure, file organization, file naming convention, build system, etc. Of course most of these options are customizable, but it's not always possible to adhere to specific conventions which you might be required to follow. Projects with a complex build system might be difficult to implement from within the IDE. Moreover, the project might not be suitable for external, independent modification; so for instance, if you are planning to write an opensource application, avoid making the IDE a dependency for the project.
If you import a project started elsewhere, chances are it won't be very easy to use all the features provided by the IDE. You will have to figure out how to hook the build system, the debugger (as the binaries might not be where expected), etc. This is especially true for large and complex projects.
The reason why these ares not a problem under Windows is that Visual Studio is a de-facto standard. Under *nix there's a tendency not to impose particular tools/editors when developing a project collaboratively, and this is why these "cross-IDE communication" problems arise.
As a final note, if you learn, say, kdevelop or netbeans, you might have problems if one day you have to work on a machine where installing those is problematic (e.g. you might not have a Java runtime available and you might not be allowed to install it). If you learn (say) Vim + plugins, you are way safer: you can keep your configuration as a .zip file on your webserver and be pretty sure that Vim will always be available everywhere.
I can't really vouch for the Eclipse module, but that might be attributed to the fact that I'm on Windows and have nearly no idea what I'm doing.
Can't go wrong with your favorite text editor though.
Eclipse isn't bad, but you have to do things Eclipse's way. Eclipse has some built in ideas on directory layout. For a new project, Eclipse is a reasonable choice. Importing an existing project into Eclipse may require some restructuring.
I used to use Eclipse under QNX for C++. The QNX people actually developed the C++ capability, so QNX would have an IDE.
Emacs works for simple things but I use Eclipse for any larger project.
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Closed 10 years ago.
I teach a sort of "lite" C++ programming course to novices ("lite" meaning no pointers, no classes, just plain old C, plus references and STL string and vectors). Students have no previous experience in programming, so I believe that using an interactive debugger would help them understand program flow, variables, and recursion.
The course is taught in Linux. Teaching them to use gdb is just overkill (they will not use nor understand most features). I just need something simple but easy to use: to see at which line the program is now, what is in the stack (local variables, previous calls, etc.). I look something similar to old Turbo Pascal or Turbo C++ Borland's debugger, or Visual Studio debugger.
Thank you,
ddd is a graphical front-end to gdb that is pretty nice. One of the down sides is a classic X interface, but I seem to recall it being pretty intuitive.
You could try using Insight a graphical front-end for gdb written by Red Hat
Or if you use GNOME desktop environment, you can also try Nemiver.
You may want to check out Eclipse CDT. It provides a C/C++ IDE that runs on multiple platforms (e.g. Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, etc.). Debugging with Eclipse CDT is comparable to using other tools such as Visual Studio.
You can check out the Eclipse CDT Debug tutorial that also includes a number of screenshots.
Qt Creator, apart from other goodies, also has a good debugger integration, for CDB, GDB and the Symnbian debugger, on all supported platforms. You don't need to use Qt to use the Qt Creator IDE, nor do you need to use QMake - it also has CMake integration, although QMake is very easy to use.
You may want to use Qt Creator as the IDE to teach programming with, consider it has some good features:
Very smart and advanced C++ editor
Project and build management tools
QMake and CMake integration
Integrated, context-sensitive help system
Excellent visual debugger (CDB, GDB and Symbian)
Supports GCC and VC++
Rapid code navigation tools
Supports Windows, Linux and Mac OS X
Perhaps it is indirect to gdb (because it's an IDE), but my recommendations would be KDevelop. Being quite spoiled with Visual Studio's debugger (professionally at work for many years), I've so far felt the most comfortable debugging in KDevelop (as hobby at home, because I could not afford Visual Studio for personal use - until Express Edition came out). It does "look something similar to" Visual Studio compared to other IDE's I've experimented with (including Eclipse CDT) when it comes to debugging step-through, step-in, etc (placing break points is a bit awkward because I don't like to use mouse too much when coding, but it's not difficult).