FOSS GUI IDEs

A question was recently posed on my LUG's mailing list asking what advantages there are to using a GUI IDE over a terminal based editor, such as vim or emacs. Here is my response:

Probably the main difference between terminal editors and GUIs is that the terminal editors require you to use a key sequence to perform tasks while the GUIs automagically display information in popups. If you have spent enough time to learn the key sequences, then (IMO) not having to move your hand between the keyboard and mouse gives terminal editors the advantage. Also, different GUIs provide different capabilities, and none of the ones I have used (see below) are a clear winner over the others.

These features include:

• Line collapsing
  
• Auto-completion of function and variable names
  
• Popups for functions showing the arguments, including data type
  
• Popups showing the values of macro definitions
  
• Popups showing the documentation for functions/classes (a man page in a popup)
  

Theoretically, the GUIs also offer better debugging capabilities. However, I am more comfortable with command line gdb. To me the GUIs are way too busy and I find the command line more flexible (p *mystruct or x/4x 0x80000c00 as opposed to a 4 click minimum and at least 10 to find the menu for doing anything other than displaying local variables).

However, there are some things that (AFAIK) GUIs can do that terminal editors can't. For example, when a compile has errors, being able to click on a compile error message and go straight to the flagged line in the source. (If anyone tells me that this is a simple matter of using ctags, then I demand you provide a simple explanation of how to use ctags to do this and all the other wonderful things that ctags claim to provide! Otherwise, I will continue to believe that ctags are a waste of time and resources.)

I have used Anjuta (which is written in C/C++ and uses GTK), Eclipse, and lately the Nokia SDK for Qt development. Here are my impressions:

Eclipse: Don't add C plugins to Eclipse, get the Ganymede Eclipse IDE for C/C++. I tried going the first path and it was ugly. Beyond that, yes Eclipse is best at Java, but this version is pretty good at C/C++. When the cursor is on a variable or function/class, all other instances of it within the current scope are highlighted. If you know your way around Eclipse, configuration is easier that the others.

Anjuta: What I love about Anjuta is that it built my autoconf and automake files for me. I was then able to tweak those to handle my custom requirements. If you have ever battled ac/am you know that every bit of help is welcome. Unfortunately, when I upgraded to a newer version, a lot of things changed. My older project files didn't quite work, so I spent a lot of time fixing those. Editor functions were different. The compile errors wouldn't go to the source code.

Nokie Qt SDK: This includes a designer for GUI (Qt specific) interfaces. Having used (and been spoiled by) the Google Android plugin for Eclipse and its GUI designer, I am not all that impressed, but it's better than not seeing the layout until you get your source compiled and debugged. Using the IDE for editing C/C++ is actually quite pleasant, and I am considering using it for future projects.

I have looked at KDevelop, but don't have any projects using it. Maybe the version I have is old, but so far it feels clunkier that the others.

Later . . . Jim