Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Programming IT Technology

Best "Visual Studio" Alternative On Linux 82

Posted by timothy from the sidestepping-the-inevitable-embrace dept.
Microsoft ISV writes: "We are beginning the next major release of our product, and we have been a Microsoft ISV for many years. In a few months Microsoft will be entering our market, and we wish to hedge our bets by supporting Linux in this next new major release. Can you ask your readership what is the best 'Visual Studio' like IDE for Linux? Especially for an ISV who will be maintaining the same product on both Windows and Linux?" Or is there even such a thing?
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Best "Visual Studio" Alternative On Linux More

Best "Visual Studio" Alternative On Linux

Comments Filter:
  • So what is an ISV ? I get the feeling this is important part of answering this question.

    I assume an ISV is providing some sort of add on, plug in, control or whatever that is integrated into a Windows app using the MS IDE ?

    So really you're asking what should we target ?

    Well target everything. Build libraries. Use the prominent GUI libraries, Motif, QT, Gimp

    Maybe this is not your question and you're developing an application in which case I don't see why you need a linux IDE. All you need is a framework that facilitates cross platform development. In this case look at WxWindows or fltk (fast light tool kit). For an example of FLTK see the Palm OS Emulator.

    • Re:ISV (Score:2, Informative)

      by jeff4747 ( 256583 )
      Independent Software Vendor. Microsoft speak for a company that develops software for Windows.

  • vi (Score:3, Funny)

    by SpanishInquisition ( 127269 ) on Monday August 13, 2001 @05:18PM (#2114143) Homepage Journal
    vi is a visual editor, isn't that what you're looking for?
    • Vi is fast small and good, but I think it's one of the less "visual" editors you will find.
    • Does vi/(X)Emacs support Code Completion, Class Browser or jump_to_declaration? (not talking about tag-creation beforehand) Is there a possiblity to use this comfortably? I think this are the really comfortable features of VC and Delphi/Kylix. For everything else (GUI aside) gcc is doing the job.
      • Code Completion to a certain extent, not inline, but then again i never use it in either VC++ or emacs or anything else because i know how to type and it just gets annoying.

        for the other ones, yes it does

        (this is all about xemacs not vi)

        Does (X)Emacs support Code Completion, Class Browser or jump_to_declaration? (not talking about tag-creation beforehand) Is there a possiblity to use this comfortably? I think this are the really comfortable features of VC and Delphi/Kylix. For everything else (GUI aside) gcc is doing the job.

  • Eclipse (Score:2, Informative)

    by Ratbert42 ( 452340 )
    IBM's Eclipse (www.eclipse.org [eclipse.org] is a possibility but it's more for Java than C++ and it's still fairly new.

  • XEmacs (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Alex Belits ( 437 ) on Monday August 13, 2001 @10:51PM (#2118244) Homepage
    Other environments may be better looking or follow languages' syntax more closely, but XEmacs certainly is most flexible and gives least amount of distraction to the programmer.
    • Nothing is more distracting than trying to figure out how to write the lisp code to get your .emacs file setup to do what you want.

      I used to use XEmacs religiously until my workstation switched from solaris to windows (work change in 96). Since then, XEmacs has been released for the Win32 platform but it doesn't really interoperate well there, and my fingers have forgotten most of the command sequences. :(

  • dont call yourself an ISV


    here is some of my advice(do a google search ;-)(bellow are sane answers)

    please try and use the gcc that fits you I recomend a dual gcc2.95 and a dev 3.1.xx or CVS version for intresting results (you will have to use redhats 2.96 if you plan to release to the 7.x as the ABI is differant but they plan 3.x for their 8.x release so it pays to be ahead of the game)


    http://anjuta.sourceforge.net [sourceforge.net] is a nice IDE that will help out visual studio freaks it has a GTK interface


    http://www.kdevelop.org" [kdevelop.org] is a KDE front end and is more mature and has a QT front end


    but seriosly learn vi


    this is because it is one of the more comman text editor and WHY because it is VERY good for seraching and writeing documents in plaintext (which I assume is what your C/C++/^*somethinglang%&^ is in)



    I have to say writeing to standards helps so try it on solaris and BSD when codeing (three boxs as build machines is not a drain plus people can use these at the same time) all of these are free and run on x86 hardware http://www.sun.com [sun.com]
    http://www.netbsd.org [netbsd.org]


    Am I the only one who is ammused by the fact that people think that M$ wont go to linux ?
    at the moment this is true but hey server side they have chillisoft doing ASP and the rest is comeing



    oh and try out GDB (-;


    regards

    john jones

    • the people responsible for the IDE on windows (Microsoft v..no realy its a text editor..isual is a responce to them)

      have released Borland [borland.com]'s Kylix [borland.com] which happens to be very nice if your a pascal/delphi man and want cross dev

      regards

      john jones

      p.s. I put in a few to many BR in the last tinking plain text did not do tags (-;

    • Re:look out people who use ISV answers (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Chilisoft is not a real implementation, as it misses the most important part of the ASP model - the ability to integrate COM, so you can make the page scripting light (presentation layer), and the heavy duty stuff handled by COM (business layer). Chilisoft is just another ripoff like JSP.
    • but seriosly learn vi

      this is because it is one of the more comman text editor and WHY because it is VERY good for seraching and writeing documents in plaintext (which I assume is what your C/C++/^*somethinglang%&^ is in)


      I love vi, but it obviously doesn't help you spell, eh? It's too bad, because an otherwise useful post like this is practically unintelligible when you have to figure out the true meaning of every other word.

    • Please someone enlighten me on vi .. for me its the most disturbing edtior i ever meet .. for example the 2 edit modes .. way too confusing. why can't i move curser around ? why del key is not working, etc ?

      I'm not flaming .. i want a honest answer. I did grew up with wordstar compatible editors (TurboPascal 3 on CP/M .. call me oldtimer ;),
      so my favorite editor is joe now ...

      • Vi, well vim (Vi Improved), has a built in tutorial that teaches you how to use it's commands and different modes, it is very handy in getting used to this editor. Just use the command "vimtutor" and off you go... Personally I love this editor as it maximizes the use of screen area, thought I have barely scratched the surface of its functionality.
      • Because vi was invented as Berkeley, where people did a lot of drugs. That pretty much explains everything. Also, Bill Joy is a crackhead. Emacs all the way.
      • The beauty of VI is your hands never leave the key board, and you never have to hit 2 keys at once (except maybe shift).

        Plus you then add in the power of regular expresion matching and you begin to see the value of vi.

        Once practiced in VI you can very rapidly make changes.

        Eg Windows Notepad to delete a line:
        "HOME" - "SHIFT" and "END" then "Delete"
        in VI
        "ESC"-"d"-"d"

        note that in Notepad you must move your right hand off the keyboard to get to the home,end, and delete keys. Where as VI your hands never leave typing position.

        Now add delete two lines:
        Notepad: add a down arrow after the delete
        vi: add a 2 before the first d.

        I really recommend visiting a VI tutorial such as http://www.eng.hawaii.edu/Tutor/vi.html.

        And Yes I use WinVi when I have to use Windows :)
        • And you hit the escape key with your nose?

          The escape key must be positioned more convieniently on the keyboard you use.

        • In fairness, the comparison of notepad and vi, the vi key sequence should have been ESC-d-d-i, otherwise after the edit operation you are no longer in the same mode you were before.

          The non-beauty of VI is that the learning curve is steep. Read any UI design guide and you could probably write another book on what VI did wrong. VI is a hold over from a time when everybody worked on dumb terminal TTYs, and its now archaic interface reflects that.

          Why isn't ctrl-s mapped to save in vi? Well, that's because ctrl-s is the TTY suspend flow control character. Why isn't ctrl-z mapped to undo? ctrl-z is usually the process suspend control character. VI worked around the limitations of dumb terminals and met the needs of file editing by implementing its modal editing interface.

          How do you delete a word in vi? "dw". How do you delete a line in vi? "dd". I see the pattern, so to delete a character you type d... uh... oh wait, you type "x" with no "d". This is inconsistent interface but was done because deleting one character should not take two keystrokes. What if I want to turn two lines into one by deleting the new line character? That's only one character, can I hit x to delete it? If y means "yank" and d means "delete", what does "$" mean? It means "end of line" except sometimes it means "end of file".

          VI is full of issues like this. It is unlikely that any user will find that the interface makes sense. People keep saying "you should learn vi" as if reading a book on vi will solve your difficulties. You don't learn vi, you memorize it. Once you have developed the brain and muscle memory behind things like "yanking" instead of copying and ":8,$/foo/s//bar/g" then I'm sure that vi appears to be "easy".

      • You are not wrong, although vi might beat edlin all the way, it is not suited for modern computers.

        Even experienced people using vi are far less eficient than joe & I are at simple task as editing a config file. vi does look as a nice try, but others have succeded in making a fast, powerful editor, yet much easier to learn. WordStar-like editors, like TP4, beat vi all the way, and joe's shortcuts are really useful and easy to learn.

        Let's face it, nobody wants to spend more than 10 minutes learning how to use a text editor, time must be spent thinking about your code, not the tool you use.

        I think the only reason why vi is still used is that old timers promote its use by not installing a good editor in their systems, while vi is found on every system.
  • anjuta.sourceforge.net [sourceforge.net]

    I'll admit that I'm biased (! - and who isn't?!) but it is coming along nicely now, and as someone who has to use Windows / Studio at work, I find it quite a comfortable transition. We're still working hard to improve it, it's not there yet (and as a few others have mentioned, KDevelop is probably slightly more "mature" right now, since it has been going longer and may have the larger development team), but the more people use it an propose improvements, the better we can make it.
  • I think that you need to decide how to support a product on both Win32 and Linux before you start to worry about the IDE you'll use.

    Which languages are portable between the two (Java, Object Pascal, C++, perl,...) and do they suit your application (you need to tell us that too -- is it a desktop app, web based ...)

    If you need a UI, how will you do that? (Swing, QT, Tk...)

    Then you can look for the best IDE's for Win32 and Linux for the environment you have chosen.

    If it turns out to be vi and make for GNU/Linux, that's OK, as long as the combination of language and UI toolkit you've chosen is otherwise portable.

    Tom

  • Sounds like you need Kylix (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Kylix (or Delphi for Linux as some people call it) has a native code compiler, and CLX, which is Borland's Component Library for Cross Platform, which can be found in both Kylix and Delphi 6. Write once, (tweak a little), then deploy on both Windows and Linux. It also has a very nice interface for RAD development. Kylix uses Object Oriented Turbo Pascal, has a native code compiler, and in my opinion kicks arse. But you know what they say about opinions. People developing open source won't really find this a popular solution because you might have to distribute closed source libraries with it, but if you're developing closed source applications, then this is a moot point. http://www.borland.com/kylix

  • gah... point and drool (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 13, 2001 @09:58PM (#2132797)
    /usr/games/fortune:

    "I'd crawl over an acre of 'Visual This++' and 'Integrated Development That' to get to gcc, Emacs, and gdb. Thank you."

    (By Vance Petree, Virginia Power)

  • If you're speaking strictly from an editing standpoint, you can also check out Code Crusader.

    It's not quite a fully featured IDE (its an editor, with function/header/class browsing features and the ability to run/capture compile ouput), but the one upside is that if youre working in an environment with tons of C++ and lots of objects, it's got one of the most kickin' class browsers and method locators I've run into.

    If you're also talking about toolkits for GUI for linux/windows, QT is pretty elegant and cross-platform. The look'n'feel of QT's widget set is about as close as it gets to Windows (which, sigh, does have the best ui widget look'n'feel IMHO).

  • What language are you currently developing with? (Score:4, Informative)

    by wrinkledshirt ( 228541 ) on Tuesday August 14, 2001 @05:56AM (#2136818) Homepage
    Seems like that would be the most important question. Recommending Kylix to a group of people who know nothing about Pascal doesn't seem like such a hot idea, nor does recommending KDevelop to Visual Basic developers...

    If you like C++, go with KDevelop.
    If you prefer C and can do XML, go with a combination of a good editor, gcc and Glade.
    If you like Pascal, go with Kylix.
    If you like Java, there's Forte (don't know anything about it).
    If you like Visual Basic, get ready to buckle down and learn a new language...
    Also, consider giving Emacs a whirl. It's scary as all git, but it does just about everything short of fixing you a sandwhich.

    • Don't forget Borland's JBuilder. Very nice if Java's your bag.

    • Glade (Score:2)

      by DrCode ( 95839 )
      Glade is a great choice if you want something lightweight that doesn't take over the whole project. It takes a little getting used to, as you have to learn something about GTK, which uses layouts rather than absolute coordinates for placing widgets (buttons, text fields, etc.)

      But you don't have to know anything about XML (I don't), and I've also found that GTK and Glade/Gladelib work nicely with C++.

    • VisualAge for Java takes a few days to get used to, but you'll never go back.

      Having the version control tightly integrated and finely grained is sooooo nice.

      Disclaimer: I am employeed by IBM.

    • Recommending Kylix to a group of people who know nothing about Pascal doesn't seem like such a hot idea, nor does recommending KDevelop to Visual Basic developers...

      You speak as if learning a new programming language is a major life change, like changing a career. It can be a pain, and time consuming (which is why I groan whenever I read about a new language), and you wouldn't want to do more than, say, once ever two or three years. But it's not that big a deal. Especially if you have a good IDE to help generate boilerplate code.

      In particular, I don't see that much difficulty in shifting from VB to Object Pascal. Once your get past a few basic weirdnesses, things are just not that different. The biggest basic difference is that OP has all the missing OOP features, like inheritance and polymorphism. But that's not important unless you're building your own components.

      Your C++ --> KDevelop inference doesn't make any sense either. KDevelop uses the Qt API, which needs language features that C++ doesn't provide -- you have to use the moc preprocessor. Not a big deal, but if you're assuming that programmers are two lazy to learn new language features....

      It is true that "big" languages like C++ and Perl have tons of features that it takes years to learn. But how many programmers ever bother?

    • If you like Pascal, go with Kylix.

      Kylix will do more than Pascal...it will do C++ as well.

      If you like Java, there's Forte (don't know anything about it).

      Isn't there also a Forte C++ compiler/IDE? Or am I thinking of commercial Unix?

  • If you're at all language agnostic, there are good offerings that will work on both Windows and Linux, for example Cincom VisualWorks (Smalltalk) and XAnalys Lispworks (Common Lisp), both of which have fine IDEs.

  • Go with Delphi/Kylix (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mikera ( 98932 ) on Tuesday August 14, 2001 @07:30AM (#2141806) Homepage Journal
    If you haven't tried them already, I would seriously check out the Delphi/Kylix combination. The IDE and the Visual Development tools in particular are IMO a class apart from Visual Studio, and certainly far superior to any of the free tools available. Not to knock the others, but Borland know how to make development tools like nobody else.

    Also the fact that you get sub-second compiles for large projects is rather sweet :-)

    Code that you produce with the Borland CLX toolkit should be portable across Linux and Windows. Also, the forthcoming iterations of C++ Builder (essentially Delphi for C++) will be Delphi/Kylix compatible as well. For obvious reasons, Borland have always stayed very Microsoft-compatible and support for things like COM objects, creating DLLs and linking with C/C++ etc. is very good.

    The fact that Delphi/Kylix use Object Pascal is frequently raised as an objection which I appreciate may be a concern. However, Object Pascal is a very powerful Pascal derivative that is easy to learn and any competent coder should have no trouble making the transition. I find that I code better in Object Pascal if only because the compiler is much more smart at picking up dubious code.

    Even if you don't eventually use Kylix, I would strongly suggest downloading the free Open Edition just to give it a test drive. It's quite an experience that may change your views on how development ought to be done.....

  • Metrowerks CodeWarrior (Score:4, Informative)

    by Smitty825 ( 114634 ) on Monday August 13, 2001 @06:42PM (#2145522) Homepage Journal
    Although I've never used their products for anything but Mac and Palm development, I've had lots of success with Metrowerks [metrowerks.com] Codewarrior. They have Win32, Mac, Solaris and Linux versions available (...and versions for the PS2, Nintendo 64, etc).

  • Visual SlickEdit (Score:3, Informative)

    by netinlet ( 132882 ) on Monday August 13, 2001 @08:55PM (#2145754)
    Very nice development environment. Runs on linux, solaris, windows, and about half a dozen other platforms. Was not ported to unix as an afterthought. Slickedit definitely helps my productivity. I use it on Linux and on Windows. I am not associated with Microedge, the manufacturer, in any way other than a very satisified customer. http://www.slickedit.com Doug
    • I agree and repeat all that.

      I've been using vslick for almost 3 years now and have been very satisfied with it. It is a bit pricey, but it is easy to customize and comes with a C-like language for writing custom macros. I've used it mostly for Java development, but it is also the best editor I've used for C and C++. One feature of vslick I have not heard mention is the diff utility. It has the best diff utility I've ever seen. It isn't just a nice GUI diff program - anytime I have to integrate code changes to different code lines or do a 3 way merge between multiple code lines, DIFFzilla is *the* tool to use.

      And as the VI pundits like to say, I never have to take my hands off the keyboard when coding in vslick.

      I think vslick costs about $200 but in a professional programming environment it pays for itself within a month or two from increased productivity.

    • Visual SlickEdit is a great gui based editor and it has multiple editor modes such as vi, emacs, windows, etc., but it is not a RAD environment as the poster might be wanting. However, VSE is incredibly easy to integrate into other programs and components as it has SlickC, a C like macro language that allows you to do pretty much anything you want to. I have personally used it to interface with an external GUI layout program (written by the company I worked for then), which then allowed the RAD like editing of code "behind the buttons" as well as syntax highlighting and project management for a language that isn't very common (Dibol). This could very easily be done for many different editors and the GUI layout tools giving the user a selection to mix and match their layout tool with their favorite editor. You can import your existing libraries into the autocompletion and construct handling routines. Oh, and tech support at SlickEdit is rather good, too.
    • Ditto, while a tad pricey, there is very little (really nothing I can think of, but im sure somebody could name something) that this program can't do. And even then you can use the built in language to make it do it!

    • Re:Visual SlickEdit (Score:3, Informative)

      by Howie ( 4244 )
      I downloaded the slickedit demo for windows after someone mentioned it on the dcdev mailing list. I had high hopes for it - the feature list is impressive! However it is the only editor I've used that I've mananged to crash within 20 minutes, doing ordinary tasks. So I switched back to EditPlus and XEmacs and gave it the heave-ho.

      Editors, like OSes and X servers shouldn't crash. Ever. Particularly when they cost at least ten times (or infinitely) more than the editor they replace.

  • Komodo (Score:4, Informative)

    by winterstorm ( 13189 ) on Monday August 13, 2001 @06:30PM (#2145772)

    Komodo [activestate.com] from Activestate is very "Visual Studio"-ish and supports PERL, Python, PHP, and a lot more.

    You might look at Sun's Forte [sun.com] as well.

    • Re:Forte (Score:2, Informative)

      by andyp ( 27347 )
      The problem with Forte is that it is slow as hell. Even on my P3 with a gig of RAM, it's painful.
      • Time to shut off all of the daemons / helper programs you're running in the background. It's painful with 128 MB RAM (on a K6-3/400) under win98. Bumping that up to 256 and defragging the hard drive made it work pretty nicely. Not as fast as a native app, but pretty darned fast for a relly big java app. I developed several small projects with Forte recently, and, after the memory upgrade, didn't have a problem with it. With the same amoutn of memory in my dual celeron 500 linux box it starts and runs at about the same speed. Therefore, if it's painful on a P3 with 1GB RAM, it's time to fix the broken system, or maybe get lower expectations of a poop language (as far as speed is concerned) like Java. :)
    • Netbeans [netbeans.org] is the (SPL [netbeans.org]) foundation of Forte.

      Their FAQ [netbeans.org] has the following [netbeans.org] to say about the relationship between Forte and Netbeans:

      The Forte for Java product line is based on NetBeans. Forte for Java Community Edition is a productized version of NetBeans and will continue to be free. The relationship between NetBeans and Forte for Java Community Edition is similar to that between Linux and companies such as Red Hat, Caldera, SuSE, Debian, etc. - a productized version of an open source project.

      Cheers //Johan

  • is already great.

    The next generation of KDevelop will make you forget Studio.

  • Serious question... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...what's an "ISV"?

    Anyway, ignoring that question, as far as Integrated Development Environments go, do they really get any better than Borland [borland.com]'s Kylix [borland.com]?

    • Re:Serious question... (Score:4, Informative)

      by DeeKayWon ( 155842 ) on Monday August 13, 2001 @06:14PM (#2144776)
      I believe it stands for Independant Software Vendor.

      To answer the question, I may not be a developer, but I have heard good things about KDevelop [kdevelop.org].

      • Re:Serious question... (Score:5, Informative)

        by JabberWokky ( 19442 ) <slashdot.com@timewarp.org> on Monday August 13, 2001 @06:46PM (#2119661) Homepage Journal
        I am a developer. KDevelop [kdevelop.org] is very good (the K means it runs under KDE, not that it is just for making KDE apps - it makes command-line, KDE and Gnome apps also). If you develop a Qt App [trolltech.com], you can cross-compile for Windows as well. It's also Free in every sense of the word, if that matters to you.

        On the commercial side, KDE Studio Gold [thekompany.com] from the Kompany looks to be even better, and they also have Blackadder for Python and Ruby development if you need that. And language legends Borland are in the process of bringing over most of their modern packages including Delphi (confusingly renamed Kylix [borland.com]), Java and C++. Right now, Kylix is available, with C++ Builder and JBuilder coming in the next few months. Again, as long as you stay away from OS specific API calls (that does for Linux and Windows), you can reuse all objects and source with a simple recompile aimed at either Windows or Linux.

        --
        Evan

        • Right now, Kylix is available, with C++ Builder and JBuilder coming in the next few months.
          Actually, JBuilder has been available for Linux and Solaris since version 3. When you buy it, you get a disk that works on Windows, Linux, and Solaris. I have been using JBuilder 4 on both Linux and Windows (dual booting), and love it. Version 5 just arrived, but I haven't installed it yet. I expect to love it!
        • C++ builder for linux? where might I see something semi official regarding this?

  • jEdit is nice (Score:2, Informative)

    by Jack Auf ( 323064 )
    We've been using jEdit at work for about a year now, and we really like it quite a bit. It's java based, so it can be a tad slow on an under powered box. Many, many languges supported, and a boat-load of plugins.

    It's kind of nice to have one IDE for C,Java, and PHP.

    I can be found at http://www.jedit.org/ [jedit.org]
  • Since you said you needed to support the same product on Linux and Windows, I suggest that you use Kylix if your product is written in Delphi, or, if it is written in C/C++ (I'm not going to touch VB :-)), I recommend that you use QT because it makes cross plattform development much easier. And PLEASE, stay away from wine if you plan to do more than a quick and dirty port for PR reasons (AKA Corel, MusicMatch,...).
    Kylix already has an IDE (a good one), and KDevelop is also good (especially for QT development).

    Another choice is Vim.
  • If you give Emacs a honest 2 weeks, it will be repaid. If you give Emacs a year watch out. Forget everything you've heard and try it. Flexibility is its strongest asset. If you want the editor to be able to do something it doesn't do now you can change it.

    Over time your Emacs becomes your version of Emacs tailored to your preferences. And speed and convenience are the result.

    Try it, you'll like it. Mikie did.

Slashdot Top Deals

He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion

Close