What is the Ultimate Linux Development Environment? 643
nachmore asks: "I've been programming on Linux for a while now, always content to use vi for my editing and any debugger tools out there (gdb for C/C++, and so forth). As part of my SoC project I was working on Thunderbird (my first huge project on Linux) and I found that , although shell-based tools can do the job, they lack in easy project management, ease of debugging and other development features. I've only ever programmed with a GUI on Windows — and I have to admit that I find Dev Studio to be one of the few programs that Microsoft seems to have gotten (nearly) right. I've played around with Eclipse but find it's C/C++ support still lacking. So what GUIs would you recommend for Linux? I would like something with debugging (single step, step through, step-to-end, etc) support, CVS access and of course, support for large projects (e.g. Mozilla) and especially good support for C/C++. Is there anything really good out there, or is vi the way to go?"
You might as well ask... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:You might as well ask... (Score:5, Funny)
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Traitor! (Score:3, Funny)
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Scientology.
Oh wait, you said religion, not cult.
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Re:You might as well ask... (Score:5, Funny)
Tom Cruise.
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Yes. he is an annoying little cult.
Re:You might as well ask... (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference between a religion and a cult is in the beliefs of its leaders. In a religion such as Catholicism, as you go up in the ranks from the lowly follower all the way up to the Pope, the devotion of its members increases. In a cult, it decreases, because its leadership sees the teachings for what they are: a means of control. Furthermore, whether you believe the teachings of a given religion yourself or not, its leadership believes they are acting in the spiritual interests of its followers. They believe they are bettering their members.
However, in both cases the rewards for being a member increases, and for a cult, this works like a pyramid scheme, siphoning wealth into the upper ranks. So yes, there is a fundamental difference between a "religion" and a "cult", other than the number of followers. Scientology is a prime example today: it was a cult when Hubbard was sailing the Mediterranean under the Sea Org flag, and it's still a cult today.
Re:You might as well ask... (Score:5, Insightful)
Thankfully, popes and antipopes all had the best interest of their followers at heart.
I guess Heaven's Gate was a religion since Marshall Applewhite believed strongly enough in it to save his followers' souls and his own soul by committing suicide so they could get on that UFO. After all what is earthly flesh compared to the eternal soul.
The difference, a religion been around long enough that people forgot it was a cult.
I'm sure when Christianity started that people said it was a cult. After all, a lot of people didn't immediately recognize Jesus as the Son of God.
I'm AC because it's bad enough talking religion with friends let alone complete strangers.
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Apparently LRH did say that - see http://www.skeptictank.org/readdig.htm [skeptictank.org] - I think he knew exactly what he was doing when he started Scientology, although in his later years he did seem to go quite mad.
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Religious nuts use Windows. They follow the masses without understanding, but still need an interface.
Cultist nuts use Linux. They need to be outside the mainstream, but still need an interface.
Agnostics either read a book, or dev their own OS. They don't need an interface, but enjoy keeping in contact with the first two groups.
Athiests don't believe interfaces exist.
Re:You might as well ask... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Oh, you must be referring to the Judaism branch.
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Actually there is a 'sect' of Judaism that considers itself to be both Jewish and Christian (i.e. they're jews that consider Jesus to be the Messiah). Given that Jesus and the first generation or two of deciples would have fit in this definition, I'd say that they'd have to classify as Christian -- Unless you want to consider St. Paul and the other apostles as non-christian (not to mention Jesus, himself).
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And here I was thinking that no one believed in sacrifice anymore. Thanks, you made my day
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Although Omnianism hasnt been the same since prophet Brutha...
Re:You might as well ask... (Score:4, Funny)
I mean, sure, a quick tug now and again, but outright worship? You'll go blind.
vim (Score:5, Insightful)
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Vim is simply awesome, it's a daily rejoyce to work with it.
Every minute spent learning it's multitude of features will save you a hundred minutes with gained produtivity. And it never stops, you allways learn a bit more everyday. There's nothing it can't do, you just haven't learned it yet. If you're lazy to study it's excelent documentation, just ask at vim@vim.org or #vim.
It's in the top five best software ever, along with:
- Linux, for saving my soul from Windows;
- LaTeX,
Re:vim (Score:4, Funny)
Can it make me a cup of coffee [debian.org]?
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Scary to think how much production code gets action with wizard generated code and developers have no idea what that code is actually doing other than maybe a cursory overview, if that.
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(1 google later...)
Oh great!
(current project: 97k lines of code. Not huge, but fairly sizeable)
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Speaking of which, my signature contains a tip I learned a while back, and I've been shocked to discover most Vim users don't know it. (I used Vim for years without knowing it either.) Just in case I change the signature sometime, here it is:
Don't reach for the ESC key in Vim. Use Ctrl-C instead.
Unix is an IDE (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem, of course, is that the learning part takes several years.
Its called emacs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Its called emacs (Score:5, Funny)
But hang on to vi, because you'll still need a decent text editor.
KFG
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it could work (Score:3, Funny)
Emacs can open a window for shell commands or to do a compile. Running vi is certainly something you could do. You could even bind it to a key.
Its called vim (Score:4, Insightful)
My colleagues and I had an all out war (emacs vs. vim). In the end, we discovered that they are both just as feature complete and able to emulate each other quite well. Emacs could be a tad more efficient, as it requires more RAM, disk space, and CPU time than vim. It's a non-issue if you have enough resources. For us, it was an issue (flash drive).
In any case, if you are willing to invest the time to master either emacs or vim, I think you'd be best served. Graphical IDE's are often easier on the eyes, but I've yet to find one as customizable. All the features you'd ever need can be had in either of these two editors and they really are superb at what they do.
Emacs excels at the basics... (Score:3, Interesting)
KDevelop (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yeah, the other day I went to try out KDevelop. Worst IDE I have ever tried...ever.
I was trying to create a project, I chose my folder I wanted it in. KDevelop then proceded to tell me that the folder didn't exist (I'ts supposed to create it from what I gathered). I tried createing the folder before I started the project wizard. No luck, it whined about the folder existing. I then decided to RTFM before I asked about it. Unfortunetely the manual consists of a few descriptions of what menu options do, and
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SlickEdit (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:SlickEdit (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose I could get work to pay, but that doesn't help me at home (no, I don't illegally copy software).
Who has done it right? (Score:2, Funny)
I wonder. Which Dev tool gets it right?
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Man, you must be new here.
emacs, of course. 8^)
If you must... (Score:3, Informative)
Absolutely -- that and Excel.
Anyway, as with a lot of things in Linux, you might want to take your preferred toolkit into account. (Since you seem to be asking about a RAD...) I personally love KDevelop, which is integrated with Qt Designer. If you want to use GNOME as a platform, there are tools that I haven't looked in on in a while but should be easy to find. Although back when the weekly KDE developer interviews asked about preferred tools, they mostly used Emacs, so take that for what it's worth.
(PS: to fend off flames -- I know you can write GNOME code in KDevelop and vice versa, but when last I tried, the cross-toolkit RAD wasn't there.)
Re:If you must... (Score:5, Informative)
I believe the GNOME equivalent is Anjuta [sourceforge.net], which has a lot of the features the OP was asking for. I haven't really used it myself so I can't really say. As you note for KDE developers, my understanding that a lot of GNOME devs just use Emacs. Still, if you want something with a nice GUI then Anjuta looks [sourceforge.net] decent [sourceforge.net] (choice of GTK theme used for screenshots not withstanding).
Re:If you must... (Score:5, Informative)
I strongly disagree. I've been using every version of visual studio professionaly since version 6 (and I used v5 at school), and it's been a complete pain in the ass through the years. It used to do things that others IDE didn't do, so at some point most of its crappiness was tolerable.
But nowadays, this thing is unacceptable.
Vs2003 was almost ok and seemed to have the potential to turn into something acceptable.
Plenty of things were wrong or even a complete pain in the ass already: the project settings dialog, the configuration system, the inflexible build system which mysteriously failed to rebuild things on a regular basis, the mysterious and annoying separation of file system hierarchy and project hierarchy, the irritating and random hanging for dozen of secodns at time of the whole thing for no apparent reason, the tiny, cramped and not resizable dialogs...
Then vs2005 came along.
This thing is a monstrosity. It didn't fix anything that I had a problem with in vs2003. Instead, it became more slow, badly architectured and is a total shrine of mediocrity.
It spam refresh the project list tree for dozens of seconds at a time for no reason. Close multiple tabs and watch as it pointlessly waste its time (and yours) refreshing the display after closing each tab.
The project configuration dialog is a complete joke which tend to overwrite the wrong project settings for no reason.
Watch it randomly remove projects from the solution from times to time.
Create a file, add it to the project, and it chokes and crash.
Try to rebuild the project or just even run it, wait for 30 seconds for that clusterfuck of an ide to figure out that nothing should be built. Not that it ever gets it right if a lot of stuff were updated in your last version control update, anyway.
Scalability is horrendous.
And of course, they still haven't figured out how how to make resizable dialogs. The did figure out how to add gradients in the toolbars, though. Thanks for this awesome usability improvement guys.
Oh, I almost forgot that they decided arbitrarily to not provide you with redistributable debug version of the runtime libraries. Since I'm working on an internal production application with an hopelessly convoluted setup procedure, I really enjoy not being able to run a debug version on a user's machine to help me troubleshoot some issues. Development tools are supposed to make the developer's life easier, not to create gratuitous inconveniences.
I use thing thing 8 hours per day. I hate it with a passion.
And it's not like it's cheap either.
Re:If you must... I must (Score:3, Insightful)
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The key driver for us has been the introduction of generics. Aside, what is with that? Why didn't they just call them templates and add into in 1.0/1.1?
Regarding Debuggers, everyone should read (Score:4, Insightful)
The best environment in Linux - as with on any platform - is a text editor and a solid mind that thinks the problems through before typing. IDEs inhibit that thought process.
Regarding slashdot, everyone should think. (Score:3, Funny)
Apparently posting to slashdot has a similiar effect.
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Inhibit? umm.. no.
All an IDE is supposed to do (and all of the ones I've personally seen, do this) is make development easier. Why should you have to lookup the signature on a function/method, when an IDE can list them? Why should you have to change windows, start the process, start the debugger whatever else, when an IDE can do that?
Eclipse (Score:5, Insightful)
Care to enlighten us on what was lacking with Eclipse and CDT?
My only real complaint is the large times it takes to recompile large projects. Slow indexing/parsing times for large amounts (1000+) of files are a given however for any type of tool that is going to cross reference new projects. However, if I have control of the project extraction of projects into logical subcomponents rather than editing huge single projects with Eclipse/CDT will give you a very nice time speed up.
A personal fave is that the debugger integration in eclipse is second to none.
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Re:Eclipse (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Eclipse (Score:5, Informative)
"Turn off Build Automatically" -- In Eclipse/Java, you'd never need to tell someone to do this, even in the largest of projects, because the build runs quickly and incrementally (using the built-in Eclipse Java compiler). But in CDT, the only way to build is to run your entire toolchain using a Makefile. (So instead of fixing this, they provide features to auto-generate the Makefile!)
"The CDT full indexer is very expensive on large C++ projects (Recommendation: Don't use it on such projects)" Gee, thanks! That's the thing that makes Eclipse (in Java) so Eclipse-y, you know? So make sure you turn that off on large projects.
Oh, and there's my personal favorite FAQ: Can I debug Java and C++ at the same time? [eclipse.org] Answer? "If you can get this to work, please let the cdt-dev mailing list know!"
The Eclipse CDT is a joke. Even Visual Studio can handle reference searches on large projects.
Re:Eclipse (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately, I have to agree. I use Eclipse on some C++ projects, simply because I like the GUI, project file tree (Emacs gets very annoying across larger source trees), and CVS integration. However, I've had to turn off most of CDT's features because they are just too damn painful. Every time I try to do something that would trigger an auto-complete drop-down, the system strains and stalls for a while before it maybe gives me an accurate list of choices. I also had to stop building from within Eclipse, since my project used makefiles that generated absurly long command lines (lots of stuff to include/link). These got trunkated in Eclipse and bombed out, but worked just fine in a shell window.
Of course in Java-land, Eclipse is wonderful. It may feel a bit less polished than NetBeans, but IMHO beats it on some useful features (like while-you-code error checking across files).
Re:Eclipse (Score:5, Informative)
Although they have been in 1.0rc2 for quite some time, they make nightly bulds which are very good.
I would say the best enviroment would be (Score:2, Funny)
Personally... (Score:5, Insightful)
By preference I use zsh, vi and make.Screen or multiple terminal windows (aterm by preference). Depending on the task and the requirements, GCC/gdb/ctags or perl/CPAN or boo+nmake+nunit. Throw in find grep and all the usual suspects in support. Tools with a command line interface preferred over ones without, commands that read from stdin and write to stdout by default perferred over others. Special exemption made for browsers and drawing programs.
If the structure of an application is too complex to manage under a unix command shell, that's a reflection on the design of the app in my book. I don't expect that's going to be a widely held viewpoint around here. Never mind, it works for me :)
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How exactly? I primarly use Visual C++ 6's IDE and have found, as with other development environments like IntelliJ, all they really seem to be good at is helping you to organize your projects files and automa
Re:Personally... (Score:5, Insightful)
In what way is it more "in place" to click on different tabs in a terminal window versus clicking on different sub-menus in an IDE?
An IDE is typically just a collection of specialised, tiled windows with some menus and buttons up the top. The specialisaton of each window has a downside in that it wastes precious screen real estate when you don't happen to be using those specialised functions. Personally, I prefer to be able maximise my code window and keep all the other junk out of the way as I find that maximises my productivity.
While a well designed IDE can help they are overrated as productivity boosters. Most of the productivity gains come not from the IDE per se but from the various tricks, noted by other posters, incorporated into it. Non-IDE programmers have their own bag of tricks e.g. Often writing small scripts to accomplish some repetitive function that might not be anticipated by an IDE designer, or taking advantage of a full OS of command line and GUI tools that an IDE can only dream about. Most IDE's have external tools functions but they are usually badly integrated.
---
Don't be a programmer-bureaucrat; someone who substitutes marketing buzzwords and software bloat for verifiable improvements.
Re:Personally... (Score:5, Interesting)
The one thing that autocompleting IDE's do that bugs the hell out of me is that they make it easier to slip into the i, ii, iii syndrome without *immediate* consequences. At work, we had one clown that wrote all this page handling shit I'm dealing with who would sprinkle his code with various iterations of what would be best defined by the regular expression: [a-z]+ (he also put lots of business code inside of JSPs, but that's yet another story). The IDE made it too easy for him do that because he could just summon the magical autocompletion and not have to think about the difference between i and iiii.
That said, I think that hating on the IDE because people are retarded is wrong. I personally love the autocompletion because it saves me time by not even giving me a chance to typo. That, plus the automatic red underline for syntax errors (usually unimported resources) make writing code that much easier; instead of focusing on the syntax, I can focus on the algorithm.
found your problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Rethink your desktop, abandoning the Windows-like defaults you were given. Do like the UNIX workstation users. Example:
Put a thick (50 to 60 pixel) gnome task bar at the bottom. Eliminate the one at the top. Put a 5x2, 4x2, or 3x2 virtual desktop selector thing on the task bar. Set your window policy to the traditional UNIX-style focus-follows-mouse. Never ever minimize, maximize, or roll up a window; simply spread them across the virtual desktops. You should use the traditional xterm, white on black, with the default font. (80x70 characters is good) A sharp LCD (native resolution, digital connector) is strongly suggested, at a minimum resolution of 1600x1024. Choose a fast-starting editor: original vi, joe (like WordStar), microemacs, or even (ick) pico. Linus uses microemacs; the source is on the kernel.org site probably under the name uemacs. Never use the file manager or file selector if you can possibly avoid it.
That's what the real hackers use, at least when the hardware is available. It's an upgrade from the "screen" program or the Linux console virtual terminals, without much change to the tried-and-true work habits.
You don't have to go with that exactly, but it's clear that your current setup isn't working for you. An IDE is a workaround, not a proper fix. An IDE only helps with one very specific task. A proper fix will make you more efficient at many other tasks. You might even start to like the gimp (zillions of windows instead of tabs) or set your web browser to open windows instead of tabs.
BTW, learn the extra tools. Valgrind usually whips gdb. You may also like ltrace, strace, nm, eu-readelf or readelf, oprofile, etc. Rarely will you find an IDE button to make these tools run. Learn the shell, really: you can do loops right on the command line, backtick substitution, etc.
Understanding and Navigating Code (Score:4, Insightful)
I've since moved on from C/C++, but last time I checked the Eclipse CDT was getting a lot of work done on it. What is the problem with it these days?
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Then just use you editor of choice (Emacs or VI). Hmmmm - there must be Emacs additions that integrate Doxygen.
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In the least popular opinion... (Score:3, Insightful)
Agnosticism. (ducks)
Though, actually, that's not far from my recommendation. Learn a bunch of different stuff. Learn vi and emacs, they both have their place. Spend some more time with Eclipse, I'm curious as to what you found lacking there? If you still don't like it kick around some of the other Linux IDE's. Hell even if you do like it kick around some that look appealing. Try some different frontends for gdb/vim/emacs/etc./etc. Just like anything, different tools are appropriate to different projects, and if you don't get too stuck with one (as seems to be the sad state of affairs for many here) you won't find yourself in the frustrating situation of trying to put in a nail with a screwdriver or hammer in a screw.
xcode (Score:2)
emacs (Score:5, Informative)
Emacs also offers easy access to our source control system (by corporate mandate, we use ClearCase, which I do not recommend to anyone wishing to maintain their sanity).
Finally, emacs allows me to open two (or more) windows in the same session. I generally put two windows next to each other so I can edit two files at once. This lets me open up files as I need them in either window, and then switch to that buffer in the other window if I need to get to it later.
Even though I consider myself a vi person, I've found emacs to be a very good environment for editing source files. It is very customizable and powerful. It adapts to how you want to use it (other people use it in vastly different ways), and generally gets out of your way to let you get your work done.
Just my opinion.
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noobs (Score:2)
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echo -e "First line\nSecond line\nThird line\netc.etc." > name.of.file
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Visual Studio 2005 (Score:4, Insightful)
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Even with its' short comings, it is far and above the best IDE for a lot of development. I mainly work on web based applications, and never touch the design view though.... When doing GUI apps, I tend to favor design mode.. kind of a duality of sorts, I just like the tighter control over
Don't write off simple tools until you know them (Score:5, Insightful)
Tool choices are clearly an issue of personal taste. And as my tastes clearly don't match yours, I won't be making any suggestions.
But I will say that, without exception, all the best developers I've known in my career (yes, every single one of them) work with a text editor and a shell window. They use GUI and web tools where needed or useful, but their minute to minute activity is spent at the keyboard, writing, running and reading code.
I submit that this is not a coincidence. The best developers write their own simple tools for small problems, and the proper environment for running simple tools is the command line. Great programmers work in varied environments and use diverse languages and configuration formats, where IDEs work well only within their target realm and are pretty much useless outside of it (e.g. no PHP mode in MSVC).
The benefit you get from fancy tools is real, but it's ephemeral. It make the typing of code (and maybe the reading of code) easier. But it does this by simplifying and obscuring the underlying details. Want to add a file to the project? Add it to this dialog. Need to check something in? Click here. Never mind how it all works, and hope that you never get tasked with doing something complicated (like an automated check-out-build-and-package script over a secure remote link).
By contrast, the understanding inherent in using your tools on the lowest level provides benefits all through the development process. These are the folks who won't think twice about writing a quick shell script to do the remote build.
So, by all means try out the fancy tools you can. But don't skip the part where you learn how to use the underlying tools well. Use the GUI stuff as an aid for the tasks you do understand, not as a substitute for what you don't.
Re:Don't write off simple tools until you know the (Score:2, Interesting)
Disclaimer: I work for a company that sells development tools, including tools for Linux.
Some bugs can be fiendishly difficult to diagnose, particularly bugs that involve timing, resource usage, random events, and memory corruption. I
Re:Don't write off simple tools until you know the (Score:4, Insightful)
No offense, but if you need a tool to tell you how your program works, you've got bigger problems. Even in multithreaded code, with sufficient diagnostic output, you should be able to solve any bug. In all my time as a developer, I have yet to come across a bug that can't be solved by developing a mental model of the code (usually with the help of extensive telemetry) and working through things logically.
Re:Don't write off simple tools until you know the (Score:4, Insightful)
That's my experience too, actually. And it's also the way I worked back when I pounded code for a living, working with (actually working around) the big Rational APEX IDE, this on a project with well more than its fair share of studly coders.
I also fully agree with those who have emphasized code reading/understanding as the critical activity in software development. Things like ctags were a really important development. At the same time, I've emphasized the readability of the running text itself. I've heard some advocate that "the IDE will locate cross-references, etc for you" implying that all developers will have equal access to the IDE -and- the IDE will be fail-proof in finding cross references/relevant related information through its own code understanding. Rather, I think that the one-and-only thing you're guaranteed to get in a maintenance situation is the source code, so source code must stand alone in its ability to be understood.
dave
Re:Don't write off simple tools until you know the (Score:5, Informative)
Now I'm using Eclipse for Java, and once you understand how it works, there's just too much to gain from it.
I don't browse the code, I navigate it. I don't navigate to files, I search for them. Go to declaration, forward and back editor navigation, automatic javadoc, automatic class and member creation, method extracting (yay!) are all features that, when combined, make an IDE that actually helps you build better code, faster.
Of course an IDE does get in your way, but Eclipse gives so much that it's worth it.
Debuggin with eclipse is great, it's the first debugger I'm actually using and liking since turbo pascal 5.5! (the VB6 debugger, I didn't enjoy that much)
I understand that CDT doesn't have as many features as the java stuff, but I think that going to Eclipse would be a good investment for anyone. You just need to adapt to it, and discovering features is not that difficult, you can start by printing a cheatsheet.
I'm sure emacs can do most of this stuff too, and way faster, but it does take more commitment.
I like Eclipse. (Score:4, Interesting)
For most things - assembler, shell, Perl, C, C++, SQL... Slick Subversion integration [tigris.org] is a plus.
Sun Studio [sun.com] for Linux might be worth trying out.
KDE(K Development Environment :) (Score:4, Interesting)
Just a bunch of Kate and konsole sessions, spread over many desktops.
And kompose to have immediate access on any of them.
Also, the ability to launch immediately a konsole on any directory(F4 now ctrl-t on older versions)
is invaluable. And other than that vim for quick editing of project files(Makefiles, configure
scripts, etc...)
And yakuake can come in handy, since it is an unobstrusive and easy way to run commands.
Other than that,a healthy mix of traditional unix tools(cat, grep and sed is what I use mostly)
and a couple of python scripts to automate some tasks and even create on the fly graphical
components with Tk, to ease the management of your project.
Emacs/Slime (Score:3, Interesting)
Slime uses a component running in the Lisp process, and elisp code running in Emacs that communicates with the Lisp through a local INET socket. That means you can run the Lisp process on machine 1, set up an ssh tunnel to it from machine 2, potentially running a different OS, and connect to 1 from an Emacs on 2. I actually do this every day, connecting to a remote SBCL on Linux from both Linux and Windows. The interaction is fast enough that I routinely develop on the remote Lisp image over a WAN link.
The system works with any libraries available for your Lisp implementation, including database, web, and GUI toolkits, although it would be tricky do to GUIs over remote, and Open GL would probably have to be local.
Of course, there are some caveats... Developing in a Lisp is like working in another OS running on top of the host OS (especially with multiple threads). Also, Emacs doesn't have a drag-and-drop GUI builder, although one could be built in Common Lisp. And, you would have to develop a taste for parentheses.
Obvious answer to all such questions (Score:5, Insightful)
There are MANY excellent solutions which provide different pros and cons, to be considered by the potential user.
You must be recently freed of Windows where you are simply told what you want, here in the world of FOSS you have choices.
Reminds me of a lady who came to the US from Russia some twentyish years ago, when she saw a grocery store with CHOICES she flipped, couldn't handle the concept.
Question Answered (Score:5, Funny)
So I guess we've finally found out which editor is faster.
*Disclaimer: I like Emacs, really. It's taking up 40% of my screen right now.
Strange Contendor. . . (Score:4, Informative)
Emacs or Vi is really nice for development, but neither of them are an IDE.
Code::Blocks (Score:3, Interesting)
Use the Best (Score:3, Interesting)
Writing code in Linux is just as easy as writing code for Windows, but when it comes to debugging, there is just no comparison...Dev Studio smokes anything Linux has to offer by such a wide margin as to be embarrassing. It still astounds me that the Linux community has not come up with anything that can compare. I put this down to the whole OSS attitude of "Real Developers use VI/EMACS." Creating a top-notch development environment is extremely hard, and there are no good alternatives for Linux.
That all being said, if you are doing Java development, Eclipse is easily a match for Dev Studio.
The Ultimate Linux Development Environment (Score:3, Insightful)
I personally find that IDEs make it far too easy to navigate around the code base, preventing me from ever really learning how things fit together. If you can memorize how things fit together from within an IDE, more power to you. I also feel that it's important to be able to perform various tasks without an IDE because eventually you will find yourself in a situation where you are not able to use the IDE (Going to the desk of a co-worker who doesn't have the IDE, working on a customer's site with whatever software they decided to provide you. etc) and if you don't know how to do things outside the IDE then you're pretty much lost. If you use the IDE as a crutch to avoid learning the tools that are available on the system, perhaps a career in marketing and sales would be more your speed.
Unique to Linux: debugger able to step /backwards/ (Score:3, Interesting)
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(a) it doesn't do C, which was kind of the point of the question
(b) as an IDE it's quite good, but it's the refactorings that make it the Best Java IDE.
editing 20+ files is not hard (Score:3, Insightful)
I just open 20 or more xterm windows.
Probably that seems insane to you. It is, if you don't free yourself from the Windows-style desktop. I can deal with dozens of windows with little effort by setting up a traditional workstation-style environment:
a. focus-follows-mouse, not click-to-focus
b. never minimize, maximize, or roll-up
c. 6 to 12 virtual desktops (use them all)
d. never use the GUI file manager or desktop
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KDevelop really annoyed me a lot, it was unusable for me.
Eclipse is great for java, but for C or C++ it really let me down.
Anjuta isn't perfect (but no other IDE I've ever seen is anyway), but overall it does most of what I want perfectly.
Re:Microsoft IDE is like a bad rash (Score:5, Informative)
Stuff your arrogance where the sun doesn't shine.
I for one have been using Visual Studio for more than six years. I used 6, 7 and 8. 6 IS crap, yes. But the rest of your posting radiates ignorance. The typical UNIX way (make/emacs/vi/shell) is not The Way To Enlightenment. I don't use VS for code generation, I use it because it automates stuff I just don't want to handle all the time. Building? One click. Debugging? MUCH easier than with gdb. Quick overview & access to all files? Done.
I do develop for Linux, too, and it constantly bugs me that I have to switch to the shell, type make/scons/whatever, see the error output, switch back to the editor, look for the file in the file requester, open it, switch back to see the exact error, switch back to the editor.... vi and emacs are damn confusing, gvim is ok, but doesn't have a file overview panel like VS has. My favourite editors in Linux are kate, nedit and gedit, but none of them have all helpful tools VS has. Oh, and then there is gdb. Debugging multithreaded stuff with gdb - yeah right. gdb often simply misses breakpoints, does not find the source (even when I specified the exact path in the source command), watching variables is unnecessarily difficult etc. gdb is an absolute nightmare to use. ddd is better, kdbg is best, but debugging is one of the things where an IDE shines: since it has knowledge about the overall project structure and the files it consists of, debugging can be much easier. Then there are additional benefits, like refactoring tools (mostly in Java IDEs though - see IDEA).