We have a C++ application that runs on Solaris. There are no plans of porting it to other platforms as of now.
Assuming that you have to choose between Netbeans 7 (or higher) and Oracle Solaris Studio 12.3 as an IDE, which one would you go for?
The following are the essential requirements that should be met:
Better IDE Integration with Subversion source control (Checkin,
Checkout, Diff and Merge files from within IDE)
Better debugging performance.
Code Navigation performance (Some of the individual source files we
have are of 1MB or more)
Support for remote development(Remote checkout/check in etc)
Ability to extend the IDE through plugins.
The fact that both of the IDEs are based on the same code base, is making the choice difficult.
Sun Studio is tightly integrated with Solaris in a good way. On the other hand Netbeans has more momentum and frequent bug fixes/releases.
Any thoughts on this will be greatly appreciated.
For C++ development and all the versioning and other stuff you mention I'd add a 3rd option... Eclipse.
Given your requirements its a tough call. Personally, I would select Solaris Studio.
Studio gives you all the compilers and debugging tools in the "box", along with some pretty
powerful performance analysis tools. And, in the latest version, it is integrating into the Solaris IPS mechanism so it makes it easy to install and upgrade.
Related
Firstly, I saw some topics about these two but weren't my answer.
I'm looking for a good FPC(Free Pascal Compiler) IDE on GNU/Linux.
There are some IDE's like Lazarus and CodeTyphon. I need suggestion to choose one of those.
I've tried Lazarus once but all windows was separated. It looks messy and not interesting.
I would like to know what are the distinguishes between these two ?
I would like to know advantages / disadvantages each of those. Thank you
CodeTyphon is a distro of Lazarus, like Ubuntu and Debian are distros of Linux.
CodeTyphon comes with a large package of components and plugins, that otherwise you would have to google and download and install.
CodeTyphon have their own idea what are stable versions and what are not stable yet for both of FPC (compiler) and Lazarus(IDE). Whether their assessment is better or worse than upstream's Lazarus Team's, I don't know.
What about one-single-window plugin, it is work-in-progress and it doesn't seems to me it is ready for production use, no matter would you get it as part of CT or download and add it to vanilla Lazarus. However maybe it better works on Linux than on Windows, I don't know.
There were however issues with code legality in CT grande bundle. It is widely believed that Orca (if I remember the name) violates copyrights of glScene/vgScene, which also happened in early Delphi FMX releases but was fixed by EMBA later. There also were disputes in FPC forums/wiki about CodeTyphon pirating some open-source components. See answer by Peter Dunne below.
Your question is akin to asking the difference between Linux and Ubuntu. Lazarus is an IDE/component library, based on FreePascal (FPC). And CodeTyphon is a distribution of Lazarus and FPC. So CodeTyphon is just one way to install a functioning installation of Lazarus.
Lazarus uses the same floating window design as older versions of Delphi. Installing from CodeTyphon won't change that.
Myself and several friends highlighted several licensing issues with codetyphon
most of which could have been corrected by sourcing the included files from known good source and ensuring the correct license headers were included
PirateLogic refused to correct the issues which means they are using code in direct violation of the original license terms
The fact its open source code does not change the fact they are pirating the code by not including the correct license even after the issue was highlighted
I also found several instances of copyright code included which appears to be proprietary and not FOSS at all
They also changed the path & file names on some libraries so that source is no longer compatible with standard lazarus/component installs
This in my view is totally illogical
These 2 factors heavily undermine what was potentially the best FPC/Lazarus distro
Hardly professional
Lazarus can be a daunting installation process due to it's nature as a cross compiling environment. You don't just download an installer and click ok. A typical "installation" is actually a bootstrap FPC compiler doing a three-pass compilation of an "install". There are plenty of good installation scripts/methods from the official Lazarus/FPC team and in the community for a . But, understandably, the installation process is a skill in itself.
CodeTyphon is a a different/separate branch of an installer system, which is more of a utility suite/tools/third party code compilation library. If you want the simplest installation experience go with CodeTyphon. It has the nice graphical front end for managing the compiler. You can conveniently do the fancy stuff like build "cross-compilers" for almost every "target" operating system out there. It also is jam packed with hundreds of the best components/libraries pre-installed. It is a very actively maintained project and very professional. A whole lot of work is done for you.
Even if you want to be learn the low level compiler capabilities, CodeTyphon is a good place to start. It is written in FCP/Lazarus and is open source. Simply study it as "working demo app" and the other info on the compiler details. If you crash it, at least you don't have to learn to climb the hill. You get to get to start from the top and lose control on the way down. Start from scratch (and a three hour reinstallation) Hahaha
Lazarus also has a package "AnchorDock" which allows you to dock all the windows into one. Either install the anchor dock design package after installing Lazarus, or install Lazarus using the script at getlazarus.org which will do it for you.
I have a friend who is was a serious Linux developer but now he's working with C# on Windows and is really loving it. I'm attracted to C# because, like Java, I should be able to compile on one system and run anywhere.
If you are developing on Windows with C#, you're using dot-Net. On Linux and MacOS, you're using Mono.
Other people have posted that Mono is pretty good, no longer a science project, and that most of the core Microsoft functionality is present. But that's not really getting at the questions that I have. I'm wondering:
How does performance of Mono on Linux/MacOS rate against Java? If I want to run fast on all three platforms with the same object code, what's my best choice?
Is it easy/possible/reasonable to use Mono with makefiles and do my development with emacs?
Is there support for code factoring in MacOS and Linux, or am I better off just biting the bullet and doing all of my development in Windows?
How well does Mono work with Subversion and the rest of the open source development stack? How about autoconf? Or is this a completely different way of doing things?
Thanks
I have been using Mono on Linux for about three years and lately have been using it on OS X. Some of the Linux stuff was pretty extensive but the OS X stuff has just been some simple ASP.NET MVC2 apps so far.
1) Performance of Mono has never been an issue for me. That is not to say that performance has not been important, it is just that the performance of Mono itself has never been an issue. A lot of what I have done is web based so I/O and database memory use have hit me before Mono has.
Historically, the biggest deficiency with Mono has been the Garbage Collector (GC). I would say that Java is better tuned in this regard. The most recent versions of Mono have made huge strides in this area but I do not have any hard numbers for you in terms of comparisons.
I am sure Mono is faster sometimes and Java sometimes but I would say that Java is faster overall.
2) You can certainly do Mono development with makefiles. Certainly the Mono team itself does. Also you can certainly use Emacs and there is a C# mode for it.
I tend to use MonoDevelop and xbuild (Mono version of msbuild) myself and do not have any experience doing C# work in Emacs. MonoDevelop is great because it is exactly the same on all platforms. Also, although I rarely use it anymore, it is nice that the project format is the same as Visual Studio and SharpDevelop.
3) MonoDevelop has pretty decent code factoring support. It is the same on Windows, Linux, and Mac. You do not need to use Windows for development (though you certainly can) but I believe you will be happier using an IDE like MonoDevelop. Even things like Intellisense become hard to live without once you are used to them. But integrated debugging, being able to drill-down into the framework, database integration, unit testing, SCM integration, and other nice tooling support all in one place is just the way to go (for me at least).
4) Mono itself does not care about version control of course. Your source files are just text and you could use anything to manage them.
That said, MonoDevelop has fantastic Subversion support built right into the IDE. I have used it extensively and it is one of the reasons I have trouble moving off MonoDevelop even on Windows. The latest version of MonoDevelop (2.6 beta) includes Git support as well.
You did not mention unit testing but MonoDevelop also has NUnit support built into the IDE. I use that on every project as well and it works excellently. The version in MonoDevelop is 2.4.8 (if memory serves) so it is not quite current but it works great.
In a nutshell, Mono works really well with Open Source tooling in general. It has always played really well for me.
Autoconf is of course used by the Mono project itself but, as a Mono developer, I have never seen a need for it. I strive to only use managed code in my projects. As such, all I need on the target platform is Mono (or .NET). Not having to worry about all that stuff is one of the primary benefits of a managed environment like Mono or Java. The runtime itself (the CLR) ensures that my app has everything it needs to function properly.
I know that MonoDevelop will build autoconf/autorun files for C/C++ projects (non-Mono) but I have not done much with it myself.
As to a previous comment, the Mono JIT is obviously tuned to the target platform. That is where platform specific performance tuning happens.
Just as a comment, I find that Mono is best viewed as a development environment in it's own right rather than a compatibility layer for Microsoft stuff. The Mono team has extended .NET in many interesting ways. Anything you develop for Mono will run on .NET but there are some .NET features not available for Mono. For example, Mono does not support Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). You have to use Windows Forms or GTK# for cross-platform GUI work. You can also use something like Cocoa# or MonoMac on the Mac, MonoTouch on iPhone, or MonoDroid for Android. You can use Moonlight instead of Silverlight as well although I have not played with it much.
One more thing since you asked about Java. I have found a few times that the Java world had libraries that I could not find equivalents for in the .NET world. In these cases, I have had amazing luck using IKVM.NET to integrate this into my Mono apps. IKVM.NET also works on .NET but Mono and IKVM.NET are very cozy and even share some code.
So there you go, one real answer for you at least.
I want to change my OS to Ubuntu, but I have pending projects in Visual C++ and Visual Basic.
I have not worked with Ubuntu before, so will I be able to carry forward my pending work to Ubuntu? Will it work with the IDEs available in Ubuntu?
IDEs on Linux are generally for projects that work on Linux. If your projects use anything specific to MS (and Visual Basic is one such thing), you won't be able to work on them under Linux-specific IDEs. Even your C++ code might be using many Windows-specific tools, like MFC, C++/CLI or managed extensions, COM... Windows has lots of non-standard, non-portable things. So, answering your question: probably no.
You can install Visual Studio under Linux with Wine, but it will probably be an unpleasant experience: Visual Studio is a big application that strongly integrates with Windows, and Wine might not be able to emulate Windows well enough.
I would advice you to keep Windows until your work on these projects will be finished, dual-boot (install Ubuntu on another partition and boot it when you don't need to work on your projects) or install Windows in a virtual machine inside Linux (f.e. using VMWare Player or VirtualBox). I chose last option and with VMWare it is good enough for me.
The best options would be:
to use the wine emulator;
to install windows in a virtual machine (with VirtualBox);
to use MonoDevelop.
If those projects are targeted at Windows deployment, then you really ought to be developing them, or at least testing them, on Windows. That said, you could use a virtual machine to keep running Windows for work on those projects, and use Ubuntu otherwise.
If you decide to do this, I can't recommend making backups (plural!) highly enough before starting, in case you need to back out.
You can use WINE and run Visual Studio's on Ubuntu, the best option before a total conversion is to dual boot between windows and linux.
Visual C++: maybe. Depends on what kind of project it is. If it doesn't involve GUIs or MS-specific technologies like COM, .NET and company, you can probably port it with a minimum of effort. If it involves GUIs and/or MS-specific technologies, no it won't be portable.
Visual Basic: There is REALBasic which is claimed to be "like Visual Basic", but I'm rather dubious of its compatibility. (Whenever I see the words "migration tool" I get very nervous.)
That being said, you don't have to leave Windows completely behind these days. You can run WINE (if you really like pain -- I've never had WINE accomplish anything useful), or you can dual-boot or you can use something like VirtualBox to run Windows under Linux, all depending on your available resources and inclinations.
Sounds like you did not try it out: it won't work even with WINE it'll be a pain. To try out what will work or not install a virtual machine with Ubuntu as an OS under your current OS. YOu will be able to test things without breaking something.
I would suggest looking at the Mingw32 system. I have had excellent luck compiling Win32 applications (in C and C++) on a Linux system. So long as you're using the public Win32 API (basically, anything in windows.h), Mingw32 is a reasonably good choice.
You will probably not be able to use your Visual Studio solutions in Linux. Linux tends to avoid IDEs in favor of a system called Autotools. Having used both for many years, I have to say that on balance I prefer Autotools.
There is a steep learning curve involved in Autotools, but I feel the payoff is worth it. Good luck!
Are there any differences between the original CruiseControl and the .NET port? I've compared the 2, but can't find any big differences except the language it has been developed in. I want to use either one of them for (automated) testing of web applications, using Selenium and Subversion, perhaps even Groovy but don't know which to choose.
[edit]
After looking at CC and Hudson, I've chosen Hudson for it's simplicity, it already has plugins to run Groovy scripts and Selenium as well
Choose me, choose me! (I work on the original CruiseControl.)
I've never used CC.NET but from what I know I agree that they are pretty comparable. Probably the most important difference is cross-platform vs. Windows only.
Now I wonder how long until someone comes by and says their both crap and you should try Hudson? ;)
(And of course there are lots of other choices...)
CruiseControl.NET (cc.net henceforth) has build queues (http://confluence.public.thoughtworks.org/display/CCNET/Project+Configuration+Block), which allows you to serialize builds that depends on a certain build order. I'm in the process of emulating this behavior in the java version of cruisecontrol but the functionality doesn't map one to one. The reason however, that I'm at all moving from the .net to the java version is that the .net version core dumps with mono (cc.net nightly build and mono nightly build as of two months ago). The fault lies with monos thread handling but voids attempts to get cc.net up and running.
The documentation on this can be tricky to find, if you don't notice the version numbers that the configuration examples/documentation adhere to (confluence.public.thoughtworks.org has the updated configuration documentation whereas ccnet.sourceforge.net has not. I know that the ccnet is most likely a dead site, but if your're not carefully reading the datestamps on every page you're visiting, this may bite you).
Furthermore, the sourcecontrol blocks for cvs and svn in cc.net are more granular and featurerich than their counterpart in the java version, but this has not been a problem in my work. The java version is also easy to extend/modify re: plugin behavior, but you would really just like to see this kind of work going upstream instead of forking.
I'm fairly impressed with both the java version and the fork in .net (modulo mono runtime behavior), but you really do not want to try any of the other forks of cruisecontrol. I've had peripheral experience with hudson, and the features were just not compelling enough to veer me from cruisecontrol. Hudson has a (somewhat coloured) comparison map of Hudson and CruiseControl (java) at http://hudson.gotdns.com/wiki/display/HUDSON/Home
A viable alternative is the python implemented buildbot (http://buildbot.net/trac). It does not have fancy gui dashboards and the setup is somewhat more commandline-bound, but if you're doing distributed builds, it's very easy to set up and get running.
I think for you it will come down to operating system, original can run on nix, and .net version runs on windows.
There are other automated build utilities that can do this as well, such as TeamCity in the windows space, and cruisecontrol.rb in the ruby world.
Also there is a PowerShell based build utility called pSake that can poll subversion and perform tasks.
As good developers we keep our code as standard compliant as possible to help in porting between platforms. But what tools are available that help us build the code in a uniform way across multiple platforms.
*nix family has make but Windows needs nmake.
I have read about SCons but never used it in anger. What is your favorite build tool, why do you find it effective and are there any limitations (i.e. platforms with bad support etc).
Cross platform IDEs as well.
cmake for c/c++ environments is good. http://www.cmake.org/
I personally use ant, rake, and maven2. I have used ant the most and find it great for several reasons:
Because it is java it works on lots of platforms (without changing any scripts)
The build files are written in XML and fairly easy to write
There are lots of 3rd party extensions available for it and it is easy to write plugins for
we do extreme cross development, and our code runs on linux, windows ce, windows 2K, nucleus and uCOS-II.
since each environment uses different 'make' methodology (out nucleus customer, for example, require us to compile via code-warrior GUI).
i used ANT combined with perl for about 2 years, but this lead the build script to total non-maintainability.
now we moved to use python, which increase the maintainability of the scripts.
bottom line, i did not find a ready-made tool, and had to build my own. maybe, when i have some time (2017 ?) i will pack my scripts and distribute them ....
If you're in the Java world, there are quite a few tools which are cross-platform. Apache Ant and Maven are both build tools which will run on any platform which has Java available for it.
Cruise Control (continuous integration tool) also works on Windows and Linux (it's written in Java as well).
I haven't had any real issues with the core tools, the only problems I've sometimes had have come from things external to the build process, i.e. publishing artifacts - this will vary between systems so I've found there's no single way of setting it up.
For C/C++ development, I've found that bakefile works well. The fairly large wxWidgets project, a cross-platform cross-platform utility and UI library, uses it for their build file generation.
Bakefile is cross-platform, cross-compiler native makefiles generator. It takes compiler-independent description of build tasks as input and generates native makefile (autoconf's Makefile.in, Visual C++ project, bcc makefile etc.).
Bakefile's task is to generate native makefiles, so that people can keep using their favorite tools. There are other cross-platform make solutions, but they either aren't native and require the user to use unfamiliar tools (Boost.Build) or they are too limited (qmake).
You can use gmake on Windows as well with cygwin/minGW or build your windows stuff on Linux.
http://cdtdoug.blogspot.com/2009/05/mingw-cross-for-linux.html
There are tools like Opus Make or MKS Toolkit that offers multiplatform and support. If you have an existing codebase of make script, could be easier migrate to one of there. I suspect you may hunt for similar tools in advertising of DDJ magazine.
We've been running a Java environment for Linux, Windows and the Mac for the last 18 months.
Maven 2 drives our builds, it's pretty easy to get things consistent here. Where M2 plugins don't dare to tread, we use small Ant scripts.
IDE-wise we're using Eclipse & IDEA - both, of course, multi-platform.
Testing - JUnit, Fitnesse, Fest - all nicely multi-platform.
Release scripts are written in Ruby. There's a bit more trouble with Windows here, but a function to convert paths as necessary generally does the trick.
TeamCity does CI. We've actually migrated this from Windows to Linux and encountered no errors at all, very nice package.
We did use GWT for a while and this did cause us large amounts of pain. Be careful if you swing that way.