Quote:Original post by evolutional
I think what would be good in this thread would be a few objective reviews of the software based on personal experience.

Righto.

Here are some objective reviews. Remember the programs may have changed since I last used them. Perhaps they aren't as bad now.

Quote:Original post by tentoid
KDevelop

- Crashes more often than seems reasonable.
- Like the rest of KDE, no direct support for community extensions/plugins.
- No easy escape from the GNU automake toolchain.
+ Interface is quite customizable, although has nothing on Eclipse.
- Often forgets my interface customizations.
+ Reasonably capable interactive program checker.
+ Good understanding of C++ object model. Class browser is competent.
- No refactoring support. Shame.

Quote:
Anjuta

- For non-C/C++ languages, nothing but a glorified editor.
- Comparitively light on features and configurability.
- No extension or plugin system to correct the previous two faults.
- Doesn't know about object orientation: no C++-specific features.

Quote:
MinGW Studio

- Very limited feature-set.
+ Looks quite like Developer Studio.
- Looks quite like Developer Studio.

Quote:
Eclipse

- The best features only work for Java.
- Not easy to set up a compilation toolchain.
- Expects you to use GNU make. No support for Microsoft's nmake.
- Performance is largely at the mercy of whatever Java runtime you're using.
+ Good knowledge of the C++ object model.
- The refactoring support in C++ is virtually useless. (It's very good in Java.)
+ Highly customizable in almost all aspects.
+ The interface customization is so well realised it deserves a mention of its own.
+ Lively plugin community. Can automatically update plugins and download new plugins from update sites.
- No in-IDE feature for finding new update sites, or for searching for plugins.
+ Lots of plugins for lots of things.
- If plugin diversity is not curtailed, it'll succumb to the Emacs effect. At some point, it may need to be divided into seperate components in the manner of Mozilla's division into Firefox and Thunderbird.

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IDLE

- Little more than a text editor.
- Slow.

Quote:
emacs

= An operating system that some people mistake for an editor. Fine if you like that sort of thing.

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vi

- I don't like the weird two-mode interface. It should be a clue that no other widely-used editor has elected to duplicate that feature.
+ Fast and competent if you know how to use it.
+ Highlighting for a lot of languages.
- No project management that I can find.

Quote:
jed
nano

= Really just text editors.

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xemacs

= Emacs can be a GUI editor to.
- Emacs does almost everything it does. Should be obsolete.

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kate

+ Competent little text editor.
+ Syntax highlighting, folding, and other good stuff.
- No project management.

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scite

+ Competent little text editor.
+ Syntax highlighting, folding, and other good stuff.
- No project management.

Quote:
gvim

= Just a graphical interface to an enhanced vi. See comments for vi.

I'm using C#, currently with Monodevelop. I don't like Monodevelop; it isn't very complete. (It's only version 0.5, though.) It doesn't have code collapsing, it doesn't let me modify the editor colors, code completion freezes the app for over a minute whenever I type 'Gl.' but works quickly or not at all everywhere else. Automatic tabs are very limited; when I hit enter after a left brace, it doesn't indent farther or add a right brace.

This might just be the Debian package, though; I don't know.

What's a good editor with customizable coding colors that supports code collapsing and has a built-in way to either execute commands or use a shell? (without KDE installed) Does this exist?

If anyone is using KDevelop, I found it has support for QMake which relieves your project of all the autotools crap. A KDevelop/Qmake project has just a few files: a .kdevelop file, a main .pro file and .pro files in each source subdirectory (depends on your app). QMake then generates the makefiles automatically from the .pro files saving us a lot of trouble and time.

Just open KDevelop, New Project, Check "Show all project templates" and create a C++ / QMake project. To add libraries to link, open the QMake manager (the right sidebar, last button), right click on the "src" subproject and click "Properties". Go to "Libraries" and in "Link libraries outside project" add your libraries in the format "-l<lib>" just like the ones in normal makefiles.

Quote:Original post by C-Junkie
gedit is a great editor that syntax highlights most languages (I use it for C/C++, &#106avascript, xhtml, java, php, css, python, but it supports many more. like C#)

It's not an IDE, though. (/me still prefers makefiles) And it doesn't do anything more than highlight syntax. (I would prefer eclipse to gedit for java... if eclipse weren't such a juggernaut)

I'll also recommend gedit. Although it it only an editor, it does everything I need it to do. Tabs and Text highlighting are nice things to have (much like Crimson Editor on Windows). I still do Makefiles by hand... :)

Quote:Original post by TheWanderer
I'll also recommend gedit. Although it it only an editor, it does everything I need it to do. Tabs and Text highlighting are nice things to have (much like Crimson Editor on Windows). I still do Makefiles by hand... :)

I also use gedit for much of my programming. My only quibble with it is that it treats underscores as word separators, which is annoying for double-click selecting and when doing 'Whole word only' Search-and-Replace.

Code::Blocks is also looking very nice, although it's got some unicode issues currently.

Seems work on MinGW Dev Studio has resumed, they have recent news