Code Blocks: open-source, cross-platform, free C, C++ and Fortran IDE
codeblocks.org
codeblocks.org
I am still at university and they make us use this for C++ editing. I have made it a point to not use it and instead have been doing all my university C++ lab work on gedit because I find it much less frustrating than Code::Blocks and also because I don't have the rights to install Emacs.
The debugger is a pain to use, autocomplete is dumb, and the interface is simply difficult to use. I remember I had a hard time making it not use XTerm as a terminal when I initially tried to fight with it. I simply gave up. I even found NetBeans C++ mode to be an improvement simply because the debugger was better integrated.
On the flip side the interface, however unintuitive, does look consistent across platforms and there are a load of tutorials about C++ on the web which use Code::Blocks because of its popularity.
Its good to see an open source project going strong, and it might be great for newbies at universities when somebody else sets stuff up for you, but for my editor needs, I would look elsewhere.
To install Emacs, simply unpack the binary package into a directory
of your choice. To complete the installation process, you can
optionally run the program addpm.exe in the bin subdirectory.
...
For instance, you can now run Emacs
directly from a CD or USB flash drive without copying or installing
anything on the machine itself.
I have a custom .emacs file (predicated to work on Windows/Linux/Mac and several emacs versions and including a function to install all the custom packages I need) and other config files like .bashrc in a git repo fr quick setup. Having to compile emacs yourself would be hugely frustrating though. I've never gone that far. I use TRAMP instead :)
Write a script that does your reinstall. There's lazy-lazy and active lazy. As a programmer, it pays off to be actively lazy.
Or, you can make a Git archive of your home directory. So long as your university has good bandwidth, this means you often won't even have to reinstall.
Really, there's tons of things you can do.
Including just sticking gedit like what he's doing now.. If his assessment is that he doesn't stand to gain enough to bother then who are we to question that? I'm all for emacs any day, but let the guy make his own decisions.
"We disagree with some of the previous monetization strategies from an industry and business perspective, and have immediate plans to discontinue programs inconsistent with our being a trusted and reliable resource for the entire open source community."
Sourceforge has nice features if you get away from the malware.
Otherwise solid little IDE though. Works always out of the box. On almost any system you throw at it. And where there is complaints there is at least usage.
I started it from the command line, as I like to do with a new program. I was surprised to see not one windowing error, just administrative messages associated with the first run, and general setup. Sad to say that's unusual.
BTW Everyone, please write "Qt Creator" with space between "Qt" and "Creator". I don't know how spaceless variant got so widespread.
<--- former Dev-C++ contributor
However there is an Atom-like code editor called Visual Studio Code that is multi-platform running on Windows, OS X and Linux. I believe VSCode is built on the same platform (Electron?) as Atom although I might be wrong.
Some people/projects prefer to use MinGW-W64 builds with an IDE such as Code::Blocks, CodeLite, QtCreator, etc.
With VS Community coming out last year it has given more people/projects access to a full Visual Studio environment which is very nice IMHO. I have not seen many FOSS projects switch to using Visual Studio and MSVC (the short name for the Visual C++ Compiler) over MinGW-W64 though. I suspect this is just down to "if it ain't broke" though more than anything.
(I have used RedHat 4 back when it was new and fresh and have been using Vim for 15+ years; I have written vim scripts of 100 lines and more. Just to say, I'm not some greenhorn who's never known anything but an IDE. I still think developing C++ using Visual Studio is an order of magnitude better than any alternative.)
If the Visual Studio compiler was able to run on many platforms and target those platforms, it could definitely be a choice, as it compiles fast and generates fast code. However, for the moment, g++ allows me to ensure that my project properly builds for all desktop platforms, without having to setup compilation-dedicated virtual machines or worse, a jenkins build server ...
How are you going to avoid breaking things if you can't cross-compile before committing ?
"How are you going to avoid breaking things if you can't cross-compile before committing ?"
Depends on the workflow. If you cannot afford to break builds, you need to push changes through a staging layer, which will then (in large scale setups like that) also run tests etc. If it's just a few people, your build server will catch it. If it's just me, who cares that it breaks on another platform - I'll have to fix it myself anyway. As long as you do somewhat regular integration, obviously.
There is no silver bullet. But when it comes to giving up the great efficiency gains that come from a great IDE like Visual Studio, or having to fumble with the toolchain a bit to integrate better - it's an easy choice for me. Plus having a project that compiles with multiple compilers keeps you honest about standards conformance and portability.