I have a friend who is trying to make the switch to Linux, but is hung up on the apparent lack of debugging/IDE environments for C++, especially as they relate to template programming. He has been using visual studio for years and is maybe a little spoiled by their awesome IDE. Does anyone have any good suggestions for an environment where he can, under Linux, develop and debug with all of the usual things (Breakpoints, line highlighting for compilation errors, step in/over/out/etc, etc) that he's accustomed to? Thanks!
A:
Depends, Code::Blocks is good, Eclipse is very nice too, but you will need a very good computer. In my opinion the best choice iss gcc, gdb and ViM or Gedit.
Nathan Campos
2009-10-20 18:45:32
In my experience it's not possible to set up the debugger to get the tools that you get in Visual studio in either of these.
Brandon Pelfrey
2009-10-20 18:46:34
I run Eclipse on 5 or 6-year old computers without any issue, not sure what you mean?
RedGlyph
2009-10-20 19:04:37
+6
A:
Although many people think of it as a Java IDE, he could try NetBeans. I've used it on Windows for C and C++ development without a problem, and I know NetBeans is supported on Linux, so it would be worth a shot.
It looks like most of the features he wants are included in the C/C++ development toolkit, including integration with GDB, a profiler, and more.
Thomas Owens
2009-10-20 18:46:45
Would the downvoter care to explain what they disliked about my answer?
Jim Lewis
2009-10-20 19:13:34
+2
A:
I've used Eclipse for C/C++ and it's pretty useful. It's also used at ACM ICPC World Finals http://cm.baylor.edu/welcome.icpc
giolekva
2009-10-20 18:47:41
+3
A:
I'd recommand Code::Blocks (but use a nighty build). It can be coupled with gdb to enable step by step debugging and all that stuff.
Samuel_xL
2009-10-20 18:49:21
A:
My buddies from work use Eclipse + Scons, they also use Valgrind(spelling?) for tracking memory leaks and such.
Maciek
2009-10-20 18:58:36
Valgrind, that's correct. Very good tool to detect memory leaks and profile or debug multithread programs! That you cannot use with Windows unfortunately ;-)
RedGlyph
2009-10-20 19:08:40
Amazingly, some people actually valgrind through Wine. I mean it works, but ... wow. :p
Brandon Pelfrey
2009-10-20 21:29:03
+7
A:
Visual Studio is good, indeed.
On the free side:
Qt Creator is getting quite good too, it's worth a try. There are advantageous by-products coming from the Qt framework:
- huge library - not only to build GUI applications but for other domains as well
- portability on multiple platforms
A version 1.3 beta is available as a preview of the upcoming release but the current 1.2.1 is already all you need to manage projects.
Eclipse has already been mentioned, it's a very good environment offering many plug-ins (Mylyn, SVN, ...).
MonoDevelop somewhat supports C++ (more and more, I didn't check the latest version).
RedGlyph
2009-10-20 19:01:08
A:
About 7 years ago I used KDevelop that whas shipped with KDE. I found it quite good back than, and I hope it also improved with the time. I found it quite comparable to VC++ 6 at this time.
It alos contains Qt support, if you are need for some GUI toolkit.
Frank Bollack
2009-10-20 19:05:53
The OP wants something on par with MSVC. KDevelop3 doesn't cut it :P
Matt Joiner
2009-10-22 10:29:27
And in which aspects? What is missing? The feature list here: http://www.kdevelop.org/index.html?filename=3.5/features.html shows all the OP wants.
Frank Bollack
2009-10-22 12:08:22
A:
Many of the IDE features you listed were debugger features. The ddd (Data Display Debugger) debugger is quite a nice GUI wrapper for gdb, allowing graphical representation of data structures, a non-crappy source listing window (ie. unlike the l command of gdb where you don't get context), and also allows you to use any and all native gdb commands directly if desired.
Peeter Joot
2009-10-20 22:40:30
+1
A:
I havn't explored it personally, but Emacs has a C++ development addon that looks very much like a full IDE.
Paul Nathan
2009-10-20 22:58:43
A:
Have a look at CodeLite. Its available for Ubuntu and Fedora out of the box and even for Windows and Mac. So you have same IDE on different platforms.
We tried Eclipse and netbaens but left them due to their huge CPU and memory usage. We have a development server and all the developers connect to it via RDC. Thats why these IDEs miserably failed in our model.
So, we looked for some native IDE. Found CodeBlocks to be very good and super fast. We sort of settled on it but later found CodeLite and liked it better than CodeBlocks.
Hashim Saleem
2010-06-18 07:44:41