On Tuesday 29 Jul 2003 3:37 pm, Keith Watson wrote:
Does anyone on this list have a favourite IDE (Integrated Development Environment) they use for developing GNU/Linux apps?
I know it has a dependency on what language and graphics libraries you prefer but I'd be interested in hearing people's experiences.
Going along the GNU/Gnome route (e.g. GTK+) has anyone used Glade (a GUI/IDE?) and what do you think of it?
This has all been prompted by a copy of Kylix 3 I downloaded recently (for those who haven't a clue what I'm talking about Kylix is a port of Borland's Delphi (** see below) to GNU/Linux (and other platforms also I think?)). For the past few years Delphi has been the main software development tool I've used professionally and I was curious to see what the GNU/Linux version was like.
I was quite pleased by the completeness of the port, I successfully created the usual Hello World etc. types of applications and they ran quite happily, plus a number of more complex ones. So in terms of a development environment I had no problems.
If distributed the applications need a bunch of runtime libraries to be bundled with it. At the present time Borland grants a license to do this but it is proprietary and not GPL (although they do specifically allow the developed code and supporting configuration files to be distributed under the GPL).
Personally I'm not keen on this because; the runtime libraries are proprietary and not GPL, they are yet another bunch of libraries to install and they are not part of the usual set of GPL libraries bundled in with the common distros.
Where I'm also not so keen is the fact that the underlying tool isn't OS (open source).
So I was wondering if anyone has used (or knows of) one or more OS tools that could be used to develop OS applications in a manner similar to the Delphi IDE. I'm specifically thinking of GNU/Gnome here but that's a personal prejudice, I'd like to hear what's around for KDE and command line or ncurses type application development as well.
I started programming in object Pascal when delphi 1 came out and I must say I was very pleased when the Linux port of Delphi (Kylix) came out. Like you I find the qt library situation less than satisfactory. there is a true open source alternative called lazarus which is a Delphi lookalike built on free pascal.
I only got into Delphi (and object Pascal) because I could never get my head arounf C++. I still prefer good old C and my personal view is that the object oriented paradigm is seriously flawed. I therefore now mainly use gtk+ as it is very straightforward, is C based and relatively unbloated. I have tried glade but I don't like its file organisation and the clunky way it provides access to widow handles. As a development environment I much prefer Anjuta which can use glade if you wish.
However, luddite that I am, at present I mainly use Kate as an editor with its terminal window to run make. I have my own boiler plate set of application files which conveniently separates the gui from the meat of the application.
In the past I have used rhide which IIRC emulates the old Borland DOS based C ide I was brought up on.
Ian