Any free alternative to VisualStudio?

Question

I am in need of an IDE that can open and understand a .vcproj file. Does anyone know of something that can open these files that is free and an IDE?

It needs to be able to run on Linux (Ubuntu preferably). Also, I am not looking for a .NET IDE. The code is in C++ that I am working with.

The IDE is important because I have no clue how to compile the project, and was hoping that a .vcproj file might hold some of the precious information.

Answer 1

Perhaps Visual Studio Express would suffice?

EDIT - with the additional requirement that this run on Linux (not in the original question), I would look at installing a VM to run Windows long enough to open the project, determine the build process, and then repackage it.

However, if this is a "real" .vcproj, ie it's for Windows, being able to compile it on Linux is probably not going to be useful, unless you're looking at using something like mingw.

Answer 2

Code::Blocks (www.codeblocks.org) may do what you want.

Answer 3

Eclipse has a C++ version. If it's anything like the java version it's definately worth a look

Answer 4

MinGW Developer Studio isn't bad. It's actually a lot like Visual Studio 6. It should be found at http://www.parinyasoft.com/, but that site is apparently down, and I can't find anything about MinGW Dev Studio that is more recent than 2006, so this may not actually be an option.

Answer 5

Already asked and answered: C Editor Compiler Debugger On Windows lighter than Visual Studio

Answer 6

I used Eclipsed on windows and **nix with c++ and it was decent enough. it would not open *.vc files for you though.

You can use visual studio express to compile the original project and browse it to get the general idea what goes where. virtual box can be used to run windows inside Linux so you can use both tools at the same time. This would also enable you to run the original application and see how it behaved originally, stepping through it's code, etc.

You can use visual studio to export a make file. With some manual changes that file would build nicely on Linux.

For small enough projects you can try reading the vc files in a text editor. those are nice XML based build files and are easy enough to understand.

Answer 7

Monodevelop supports the .Net framework (C# 3.0, VB.Net 8.0, Boo, IronPython and java through IKVM) as well as C/C++ and it runs under Linux, the main advantage of it is that it can open Visual Studio projects (2005). If you don't have any managed needs (.Net) then I would go for Eclipse as others say.

Answer 8

if you will look inside the vcproj file you will find out all necessary information needed to build your project, (compilation/link flags, external libraries everything... ) using makefiles, which is a most flexible way for multiplatform compilation IMHO. Not exactly the answer to your question since makefiles are not IDE, but will do the job. On the way you will understand how you program build, which is useful as well.

Answer 9

SharpDevelop has similar Features as Visual Studio has. I do not know if C++ is supported.