What is a Good General Purpose Open Source IDE that is written natively for Windows?

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+3 Q:

What is a Good General Purpose Open Source IDE that is written natively for Windows?

Sorry to ask such a general question as I'm sure a lot of questions have been asked before about IDE's... but I specifically have major problems running IDE's that are written in non-native languages for Windows (like Java), NetBeans gave me horrible performance and I just tried Aptana and got a similar issue...

I have a fast computer (8 GB memory) and its never slow for anything else so this isn't an issue with my computer, I'm running Windows 7

I would appreciate if anyone can help identify a good open source IDE that has support for a variety of language (at least PHP and Ruby) that runs natively on Windows.. I don't care to meddle around with fixing the performance of these other IDE's, I'd just prefer to find one that works right from the beginning.

+3 A:

i would try notepad++. it's not a full-featured ide, but it supports huge amount of languages, is fast and is extendable

kgb 2010-07-04 22:08:59

yeah I use that for some things but I need an IDE where you can open files within it more easily (where it has a built in file browser)

Rick 2010-07-04 23:49:28

@Rick: Oh, if that's the problem, just download the Explorer plugin or the FTP Explorer (http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/notepad-plus/index.php?title=Plugin_Central). There are a lot of interesting plugins. That said, code completion is pretty lame, which is the main reason why I use Netbeans (a bit slow, especially on startup, but not that bad) to code. I use Notepad++ to quickly edit files, but if I have to write something from scratch, Netbeans it is.That said, I would also love to find a better IDE for PHP. Compared to VS, Netbeans is far behind.

Sylverdrag 2010-07-05 02:03:40

+1 A:

emacs is a great general purpose editor, with almost unlimited features.

Echo 2010-07-04 22:12:00

emacs isn't written 'natively for windows', right?

Jouke van der Maas 2010-07-04 22:14:13

What does "written natively for windows" mean? Emacs can be compiled for Windows machines to offer native support. The Windows port is even written using Win32 API.

Lèse majesté 2010-07-04 23:58:23

In this instance I take "natively for Windows" to mean it is compiled for Windows, not for a virtual machine environment like Java. So emacs and gvim both satisfy.

thomasrutter 2010-07-05 00:18:52

+1 A:

I like Programmers Notepad very much. It's simple and has a clean interface. It's not an IDE but you can configure it to do almost everything.

Mafi 2010-07-04 22:13:23

This is not an answer to your question, but I needed the answer format for links:

Netbeans (and Eclipse) will not use all of your 8 GB memory. They're set up to use around 256M by default, if I'm not mistaken. You should edit your startup options according to your needs. Try searching for "Netbeans JVM startup parameters" to get results like:

Tuning JVM switches for performance
How do I increase the heap size available to Eclipse?

Also see the output of java -X for more, implementation-specific parameters.

aib 2010-07-04 23:01:15

I've wasted a few hours before trying to mess around with this to no avail so I'm just going to stay away from these IDE's if there is something that works better "out of the box"

Rick 2010-07-04 23:48:36

+3 A:

Komodo Edit is pretty good on Windows. It's not exactly native, runs on XUL (like Firefox does) but it's pretty complete and simple to use for a free IDE.

Ben 2010-07-04 23:33:12

Thanks for pointing this out, their website doesn't exactly make it obvious that there is a free version but I found it.. thanks, am downloading it now

Rick 2010-07-04 23:53:14

Can't blame them for trying to sell something :)

Ben 2010-07-05 00:02:55

Yeah this seems really good, just started using it and its the speed it should be, definitely recommend it to anyone who comes across this in the future that has a similar problem to what I had

Rick 2010-07-05 00:08:24

XUL is just the interface language like WPF. It's similar to if an application used an embedded HTML rendering engine to render its UI in HTML. That doesn't mean the program doesn't have native support just because HTML isn't platform-specific. The program is still written in Win32 API and runs without an emulator or virtual machine.

Lèse majesté 2010-07-05 00:28:01

@Rick. Glad you like it. One annoying trick, in a project:Add Folder = add "virtual" folder, Add Live folder = add actual physical folder.Enjoy

Ben 2010-07-05 00:34:33

@Lèse majesté. Agreed. What i meant is that there is some degree of runtime interpretation for the UI. The core is definitely natively compiled. Xul is awesome.

Ben 2010-07-05 00:35:59

@Rick, feel free to accept my answer :P

Ben 2010-07-05 00:36:22

+1 A:

(If there's an emacs answer..)
If you have no problem investing some time into learning, (g)Vim.

Not an IDE but with some plugins ... almost.
(If you prefer point'n'click adventures over quick command line access (to manage the repository for ex.) this might not be for you, but if you should master vim (the end boss is hard) you'll finish most of your tasks faster than the college with the fancy IDE..)

not really a 'natively for windows' match either, but it'll easily beat all those IDEs speed wise.

Kuchen 2010-07-04 23:37:42

I've used vim in linux and can't see using this ever as I am going between multiple files all the time, this would make things much slower in my opinion

Rick 2010-07-04 23:50:51

@Rick: you can switch between open buffers with `:e` and a partial filename (with tab completion), or keep a bunch of open tabs, or have a window containing filenames that you do `^W_F` on. There are some modules that facilitate project management; check out the `project` module (http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=69) and `NERDTree` (http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1658). I've not used either of them (I find that vim's builtin capabilities meet my needs) but they are quite popular modules.

intuited 2010-07-05 00:12:31

I find moving between multiple files all the time in vim is actually much faster. You just need to teach your fingers the commands to split into windows, jump between windows, open the file explorer, list recently edited files etc.

thomasrutter 2010-07-05 00:16:02

Whoops, make that `:b` rather than `:e`.

intuited 2010-07-05 00:44:24

Since i think you have some white on black config file editing images in mind, a example gVim screenshot on a Win box: http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/107/tempgw.png

Kuchen 2010-07-05 01:00:29

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What is a Good General Purpose Open Source IDE that is written natively for Windows?

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