Get an overview of how to use the Eclipse Platform in your C/C++ development projects. Though Eclipse is mainly a Java development environment, its architecture ensures support for other programming languages. In this article, you’ll learn how to use the C/C++ Development Toolkit (CDT), which is the best C/C++ toolkit available for Eclipse.
C/C++ Development with the Eclipse IDE
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
being a programmer i’m always on the lookout for something that will make the often poainful task of coding that bit easier and more enjoyable… offloading the menial boring things… i used to use xemacs/gcc but slowly saw the light with IDEs… my first big IDE was netbeans for java… its a pleasure to use… despite its slow speed.
from all the goings-on i can see that eclipse will be the next big thing… but everytime i’ve tried it (usually after a release announcement) i find that one important thing stops me from adopting it as the centre of all my IDE needs (as it sets out to be) – despite all its very clean and thoughtful layout – depsite all its intelligently chisen features – …. it keeps crashing.
i really need an IDE to stay up for at least an hour while coding and running…
its a shame really becuase it is one of those rare things, sopmething designed toget your worl done.
i used to use xemacs/gcc but slowly saw the light with IDEs…
You needed to use make also. [ducks]
Seriously, I like the whole g++/make/nedit/binutils/diff/rcs combo, but the GUI code browsing tools are very handy. Using SlickEdit for a while, I got used to being able to “ctrl-.” and be taken to the current object’s definition. I’d love to see a separate GUI browsing tool that will show me a list of my classes/members/whatever and let me double-click to be taken to a nedit window with that file opened up and the cursor at the thing that I just clicked on.
Anyone know of anything like that for Linux/X?
(Yes, for now I’m using nedit’s built-in ctags functionality
Looks nice but still no code completion. I guess I’ll stick with slickedit for the time being.
JohnG, it did look like it did have some kind of object browser on the right-hand side of the IDE.
May I ask what you were doing with it when you experienced all the crashes (Java, C++, PHP, etc.)? I use Eclipse for Java (love it!) and PHP (pretty basic), and often keep it on for days at a time. I’ve been using it under WinXP on two machines since 2.0–although 2.1 is much nicer–and I have yet to see a single program crash.
(FWIW: I currently run on Sun’s J2SE 1.4, although I used to use 1.3)
As far as I’m concerned, Eclipse is a wonderful, wonderful program, and a joy to develop in.
Unless it can do VI key bindings it’s completely out for me
I’m addicted to the simple power and speed of VI, well more specifically VIM
And I’ll SMACK YOU SILLY if you recommend the Emacs bindings, i hate every aspect of Emacs
Do VI bindings exist for Eclipse, is it even possible without rewriting major portions of Eclipse?
using the gtk version release 2.1 on mandrake linux 9.1.
but i’ve had it crash on previous versions of the software and OS. no exra plug-ins installed, working only on Java. the only “odd” thing that i do is to mount a different filesystem (my pwn directory) rather than the default workspace it uses. using the latest Sun JDK whatever that is at the time.. eg 1.4.1_02 now.
i’m not saying that netbeans is bug free… but i’ll tell you what put a huge huge smile on my face: on rare occasions something “bad” happens inside netbeans… and i get an error dialog box popping up to say something (can’t remember exactly) like exception caught or unexpected ezxception… the first time i saw that my heart dropped – i thought i lost hous of work… but you know what.. i clicked “ok” … andit continued as before… no problems… (of course i saved the work, just in case).
now that’s cool.
A pretty nifty tool for code analysis is http://www.redhat.com/download/source-nav.html
It’s billed as an ide but I’ve used it before to browse source code pretty quickly to jump around to declarations and definitions. It’s worth checking out. (X app)
Re Crashes, I’ve had, *maybe*, one crash since using it. That isn’t to say there aren’ t bugs (I’m using 2.1 on Linux/GTK, Mdk 9.0), but it’s been as stable as anything else I’ve used. I have previously used 2.0 on a Mdk 8.1 System, also with good results.
Someone else mentioned code-completion. Eclipse comes with the ability to use different built-in editors, and many pluggins come with their own. As I understand it, it is the editors job to implement code completion. The Java editor, which comes with Eclipse, has it, and it works quite well.
The pre 2.1 (and post 2.0) development and integration builds had some problems with GTK. You tended to see this with very recent gtk builds. The nastiest example was a bug that caushed Eclipse to tank whenever it tried to display a progress bar of unknown duration (the one that pulses from side to side). That said, the 2.1 final seems to be very stable even on the latest GTK. I run it under GTK 2.2.1 with no problems at all.
I used Eclipse 2.0 under Windows 2000 and it never crashed there.
Under Linux I tried both the motif version and the GTK version.
It was no real fun, because motif was too ugly and GTK too unstable.
Sad, but Windows seems to be the only plattform where J2SE seems to be in a good condition.
I hope it is true what one poster said, that 2.1 will behave much better under Linux.
Regards,
Marc
Huh?
I’ve got about five programmers using the gtk2 version in house and none have reported crashes like this.
They have just moved to the 2.1 but did not experience the kind of instability you speak of in 2.0. odd.
i am currently using CDT for Eclipse with 2.1 in gtk2, and did not experience any crashes so far. by the way, to reach 277 Eclipse plugins for ready to use visit here: http://eclipse-plugins.2y.net/eclipse/index.jsp
Gtk is still maturing. I suspect those crashes are down to Gtk and cannot be caught like netbeans catches Exceptions; Gtk is written in C.
If there is someone who uses the last eclipse in Mandrake-9.1 will find problems.
The problemas aren’t related to ecipse, are GTK problems. I submit a bug in eclipse bugzilla:
http://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=36429
For solving the bug it’s necessary download the following packages from mandrake cooker:
gtk+2.0-2.2.1-4mdk.i586.rpm
libgdk_pixbuf2.0_0-2.2.1-4mdk.i586.rpm
libgtk+2.0_0-2.2.1-4mdk.i586.rpm
And install it:
rpm -Uvh *.rpm
After this eclipse work very well.
Regards,
Xevi.
(quote from article)
>> Code assist feature helps to use proper language syntax
Hm, does that mean CDT will also finally have stuff like auto completion?
(for C++, not Java)
argh, that’s some pretty fscked up Engrish.. sorry
RoyBatty wrote:
JohnG, it did look like it did have some kind of object browser on the right-hand side of the IDE.
Thanks, but what I was clumsily trying to get at is that I’d still like to use nedit as my editor, but have some smaller modular code browsing tool that I could make work with it. nedit does code-completion and hunts down definitions for me, but doesn’t (that I know of) have any code browsing functionality.
_venom wrote:
A pretty nifty tool for code analysis is http://www.redhat.com/download/source-nav.html
It’s billed as an ide but I’ve used it before to browse source code pretty quickly to jump around to declarations and definitions. It’s worth checking out. (X app)
Za! That’s pretty cool. And GPL’d too! I’ll definitely check that one out. Thanks.
Why don’t you just get Visual Slick-Edit for Linux? I use it quite a lot (I have version 5, but I’ve been debating on updating to version 8) and have come to like it very much.