red knight Posted April 28, 2003 Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 Well i had been tweaking in the weekend with Dev-Cpp (even with Murphy playing against me, my XP died without apparent reason and I had to reinstall the complete OS). Because it uses the GCC as a backend compiler is the better choice of a free, usable IDE. It has little quirks and some bugs, but nothing a project with a lot of developers reporting those bugs (Xenocide) cannot handle (in fact i had found one needed feature and only 1 minor bug in my weekend tweaking). And the good thing is that if we really need a feature we can implement it ourselves and come back to the Dev-Cpp community (something we cant do with other IDEs, if it is not there you are dead.)... Another good thing is that it works on linux too. Will try to port the engine to the new structure and link it with GCC. When i get something tidy enough and usable I will upload it to the CVS, for now i can do partials releases of the changes by forum until we have a final directory structure (CVS dont work as everybody wants with directories, so thats why im not going to upload to SourceForge yet). What do you think? You can get Dev-C++ from here GreetingsRed Knight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest stewart Posted April 28, 2003 Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 Thanks Red! So shall we make it the official compiler for windows and linux or what? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mamutas Posted April 28, 2003 Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 Thanks Red Knight. The feature list looks pretty good. Looks like a very promising IDE. What version did you test? What version should we 'oficially' use in Xenocide? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red knight Posted April 28, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 Thanks Red Knight. The feature list looks pretty good. Looks like a very promising IDE. What version did you test? What version should we 'oficially' use in Xenocide?The Beta Version 4.9.8.0 (i think) the one at the top of the list .... GreetingsRed Knight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mamutas Posted April 28, 2003 Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 Is that which you have tested? Or is that the official for Xenocide? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red knight Posted April 28, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 Is that which you have tested? Or is that the official for Xenocide? The one i had tested... looks pretty stable... I dont have objections to be the official for now, i will have a definite answer after porting the complete engine to that compiler/IDE... GreetingsRed Knight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest stewart Posted April 29, 2003 Report Share Posted April 29, 2003 If you still need to look @ it then we won't make it official. It's not good to switch official compilers often. Once you are comfortable with it then we can stamp it "approved". Let us know. Good work BTW. <-- thumbs up Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red knight Posted April 29, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 29, 2003 The official compiler is GCC we are looking for an official IDE... DevCpp generate a GCC makefile so it can be compiled by a script too... GreetingsRed Knight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest stewart Posted April 30, 2003 Report Share Posted April 30, 2003 Ah, I see. But then do we REALLY need an "official" IDE? Why do we need an official IDE? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mamutas Posted April 30, 2003 Report Share Posted April 30, 2003 I have looked a bit on Dev-Cpp. It looks pretty good as IDE, but I have not tried it makefile generation abilities. To answer Stewart's question: We don't really need an official IDE as long as we have an official compiler. I worked on a project with similar layout: we needed to support Win32, OS/2 and 3 UNIX flavors. Each of the OSes used its own compiler and there were no common IDE whatsoever. The makefiles (with ifdefs for each separate OSes) were modified manually. All compilation was done from command line. IDEs were WritePad and VI. That was a HUGE project - I did a reverse engineering of it and just for the GUI I ended up with 500+ classes. In Xenocide case, there is a common compiler, so the same makefiles will be used. The problem to have common IDE (and this is what we need to look more into) is how the project file is organized. If project file is necessary for makefile generation, then it means it must be stored in CVS and it will be locked everytime someone is going to add a file to the project. This is not good, as it will cripple other people work. If project file is generated from the makefile, then no need for it in CVS. I mean, if project file is absolutely necessary for work and it stores very user specific properties in it, which will be different amongst project members, then we must not store it in CVS. Then it means, no common IDE. We would compile either from command line, or each member would import makefile in his IDE each time it will be extracted from CVS. ... Darn, I think I did not make it clear here... I am bad communicator. Somebody, please translate my writing in English... Although, common IDE would be really nice... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gangsta Posted May 9, 2003 Report Share Posted May 9, 2003 I'm with stewy on this one. Why do we need an offical IDE for the project? When it comes to IDEs programmers get very personal on those. There are some people who refuse to program on anything except VI for instance. I like to use Anjuta as my ide on linux. I personally think people are more productive when using the enviornment they prefer instead of having one forced on them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest blaa Posted May 9, 2003 Report Share Posted May 9, 2003 Ultimately, official IDE is unenforcable anyway, unless a prefered IDE cannot, somehow, work with the official compiler/linker. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red knight Posted May 9, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 9, 2003 You can use whatever you want, official means that the project will have one of those for the newbies that dont like to mess arround with makefile generation, and not so easy to use stuff (and in this case it generates makefiles automaticly) you will need just a script (a .bat in windows) to trigger the whole compilation chain... GreetingsRed Knight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gangsta Posted May 9, 2003 Report Share Posted May 9, 2003 does that mean we won't be using autotools anymore for makefile generation? I know that's pretty much the standard when it comes to POSIX these days and people on POSIX like OS. just expect to type ./configure and then make install. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red knight Posted May 9, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 9, 2003 Most people even on linux always have problems with linking and compiling, if we can automate and minimize that entry level problem (that scare a lot of developers i will go for it)... just do an excercise go to a known project (specially libraries for development) and look how many "I cannot link module xxx.a, what i am doing wrong?" type of messages you can find... i assure you that there will be a lot, furthermore autotools and stuff is not easy under windows (were most of the developers/artists come from)... GreetingsRed Knight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest blaa Posted May 9, 2003 Report Share Posted May 9, 2003 You d'man RK! Seriously, though, if there are linking problems under Linux, maybe we'd have to specify separate official linkers for Linux and Windows. Wasn't one of the strengths of the "official" compiler that there was a Linux and Windows version of it and so, hopefully, more ease in multi-platform developement? This sounds like once you get beyond one source file things are could be different. Or is this all in the make/project files stuff and the linkers are fine? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red knight Posted May 9, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 9, 2003 Wasn't one of the strengths of the "official" compiler that there was a Linux and Windows version of it and so, hopefully, more ease in multi-platform developement? This sounds like once you get beyond one source file things are could be different. Or is this all in the make/project files stuff and the linkers are fine?Using GCC as the official compiler and DevCpp for the Official IDE, we have both Linux and Windows covered. GreetingsRed Knight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest blaa Posted May 9, 2003 Report Share Posted May 9, 2003 So in fact the IDE is more than an IDE then? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red knight Posted May 9, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 9, 2003 So in fact the IDE is more than an IDE then?It automates some tasks, but it is an IDE like others, the most interesting is the makefile generation capability... GreetingsRed Knight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest blaa Posted May 9, 2003 Report Share Posted May 9, 2003 Okay so the point of making it offiicial is that on Linux you might get link errors and using this would elimnate them? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red knight Posted May 9, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 9, 2003 Okay so the point of making it offiicial is that on Linux you might get link errors and using this would elimnate them?The idea is do not have that kind of problems on the first time... GreetingsRed Knight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gangsta Posted May 9, 2003 Report Share Posted May 9, 2003 on linux you shouldn't get link errors due to an IDE in the first place since you usually don't compile via IDE but rather using the make command. So link errors there would be the result of a bad makefile. out of curiosity, we not using autotools to generate makefiles under linux anymore? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gangsta Posted May 9, 2003 Report Share Posted May 9, 2003 Just mainly asking cause autotools handles some os dependent stuff in generating makefiles like defining certain things. the point of ./configure is to scan your system to generate a makefile based on your system and tell you if you are missing anything that you need. Projects that don't use configure usually aren't as easy to compile the first time you try. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyberdrift Posted May 12, 2003 Report Share Posted May 12, 2003 I don't think we need to get too worked up over forcing an IDE on the Linux folks. I've moved around the Bloodshed website and it doesn't look like the Linux version is downloadable as a executable. The source out of CVS is all written in Pascal, which would need Kylix to build. If you pay for the CD, you get a Linux copy of Dev-C++, but I'm not looking at doing that at this time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zwn Posted May 12, 2003 Report Share Posted May 12, 2003 hi cyberdrift, i found a linux binary on the dev c++ sourceforge page:DevC++@SourceForge feel free to try it out - guess this version (0.7.0) is pretty buggy yet...devcpp_bin_070.tar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyberdrift Posted May 12, 2003 Report Share Posted May 12, 2003 Thanks, I'll take a look Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red knight Posted May 12, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 12, 2003 (edited) Ok, this is the latest engine source... The damn thing is buggy, it dont even initializate (all introduced when porting and separating the code in libraries), there is a bug in the MiscConfigFile class that i couldnt solve cause i never had used a non visual debugger, so i am still trying to understand how it works... There is a example named configfile in the examples module that triggers the error... Cyber: Import those modules (all of the root source directories)...The module examples from the directory:examples... xenoengine from the xenoengine directory and so on. When you finish working on the xenocide source, import a new module named xenocide.new and then issue a support request to sourceforge so they can delete the old one and rename xenocide.new to xenocide. Micah: Put in your server the other file (devpack for windows) so every windows user can get the static libraries (so they dont need to compile them themselves). A Sticky post in the programming forum is enough for now. About DevCpp i expect them to issue a new version cause i had found pretty serious bugs when debugging, so when i can find out how to trigger the errors i will issue a bug report for them to work on it... Mamutas, get the source from here (Xenocide codebase is not here, cyber is working on it... here you can find several libraries and the engine - now renamed XenoEngine). GreetingsRed Knightxenocide.cvs.zip Edited May 12, 2003 by red knight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red knight Posted May 12, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 12, 2003 (edited) This is the development pack for windows (i couldnt really compile the libs so i hacked ones that i had for borland, except directX, i had downloaded those) it links but i dont know if they will work... you have to put all than under a devpack directory in the root directory of the source... for example my distribution is:xenocide.cvs devpack xenoengine utility examples . . GreetingsRed Knightdevpack.zip Edited May 12, 2003 by red knight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mamutas Posted May 13, 2003 Report Share Posted May 13, 2003 ... there is a bug in the MiscConfigFile class that i couldnt solve cause i never had used a non visual debugger, so i am still trying to understand how it works... There is a example named configfile in the examples module that triggers the error...Yep, DevCpp visual debugger is kinda crappy. I just tried it and still have trouble just simple step through the code... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red knight Posted May 14, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 14, 2003 Well guys i can left you the responsability to make the code work in GCC?? I will start to make import facility for models and that graphics stuff, cause i have no problems with BCB and i do with GCC and the Debugger or BCB is far better than this GCC one... Please tell me if it is posible we do it in that way... so i can concentrate on other priority tasks. GreetingsRed Knight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mamutas Posted May 15, 2003 Report Share Posted May 15, 2003 To Red Knight: To tell the truth, I am not comfortable with GCC either. Using non-graphical debugger feels like a stone-age thing nowadays. I would be really happy if we would use some other (read "with advanced graphical debugger") IDE for the project. But is it an option to discuss? Let it be, please, please! Anyway, I can work with the code you posted on May 12th. Is it in CVS yet? It wouldn't make much sense if several people will work on the same file at the same time, right? Also, for now I am not quite clear what did you mean "make the code work in GCC". I am not that familiar with the code yet. Could you provide more details on what exactly did you mean? The more details the better. To Cyberdrift: Let me know when you will finish with CVS, so I can work with it. As I mentioned earlier, since several people started to work on the code, it should be kept under control. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyberdrift Posted May 15, 2003 Report Share Posted May 15, 2003 I got the latest and greatest yesterday and started working on it. I'll try to have something finished and into CVS by Sunday. How many people are working on gettting the base ported to Dev-cpp right now? It would probably be beneficial to keep from having everyone heading off in their own direction. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red knight Posted May 15, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 15, 2003 You Xenocide Source and me The engine... i left the engine porting in GCC not finished, but i will start to make a Borland devpack for those interested... GreetingsRed Knight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red knight Posted May 15, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 15, 2003 To tell the truth, I am not comfortable with GCC either. Using non-graphical debugger feels like a stone-age thing nowadays. I would be really happy if we would use some other (read "with advanced graphical debugger") IDE for the project. But is it an option to discuss? Let it be, please, please!I am starting to think that it will be needed sometime, for now i do not know which IDE to look for, cause GCC is a command line tool but you will eventually need an IDE with a good Debugger for that task which works in Linux and Windows at least, dont know for Mac... Is it in CVS yet? It wouldn't make much sense if several people will work on the same file at the same time, right?Indeed. Cyber i suggest you first concentrate on the CVS stuff before doing any port stuff so we can start working on it... I had been tacklying with a friend the network lib that has been abandoned before and i guess we will have a complete proposal in 1 week or 2 (maybe fully implemented, who knows)... Also, for now I am not quite clear what did you mean "make the code work in GCC". I am not that familiar with the code yet. Could you provide more details on what exactly did you mean? The more details the better.Make it compile and link is a good start, and make at least work the FontTest example in windows (linux and Mac needs some specific code to code for that feature to work)... GreetingsRed Knight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mamutas Posted May 16, 2003 Report Share Posted May 16, 2003 To tell the truth, I am not comfortable with GCC either. Using non-graphical debugger feels like a stone-age thing nowadays. I would be really happy if we would use some other (read "with advanced graphical debugger") IDE for the project. But is it an option to discuss? Let it be, please, please!I am starting to think that it will be needed sometime, for now i do not know which IDE to look for, cause GCC is a command line tool but you will eventually need an IDE with a good Debugger for that task which works in Linux and Windows at least, dont know for Mac...!I can't say for sure, but I feel that we will spend as much time to make everything working fine on all platforms using GCC as using 3 different compilers and #ifdef'ing OS specific code. Don't you think so? I got the latest and greatest yesterday and started working on it. I'll try to have something finished and into CVS by Sunday. How many people are working on gettting the base ported to Dev-cpp right now? It would probably be beneficial to keep from having everyone heading off in their own direction.Also, for now I am not quite clear what did you mean "make the code work in GCC". I am not that familiar with the code yet. Could you provide more details on what exactly did you mean? The more details the better.Make it compile and link is a good start, and make at least work the FontTest example in windows (linux and Mac needs some specific code to code for that feature to work)...!All right. That will be my assignment then. As soon as I got 'go' from cyberdrift (that is the code will be in CVS), I will make engine compiled and linked and FontTest example working on Windows. Sounds OK? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mamutas Posted May 16, 2003 Report Share Posted May 16, 2003 (edited) To Red Knight: I just have looked at FontTest.cpp. Is it what it suppose to have inside?It does not look right for me. EDIT: I just uncommented the rest of the code except for the last main function. I got a 'memory could not be read' error. I am looking into it now.main.cpp Edited May 16, 2003 by mamutas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gangsta Posted May 16, 2003 Report Share Posted May 16, 2003 first put it up on CVS. That will make porting it to GCC easier since people can work on making diffrent parts work. Getting the non directx stuff to compile in GCC shouldn't be too hard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red knight Posted May 16, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 16, 2003 To Red Knight: I just have looked at FontTest.cpp. Is it what it suppose to have inside?It does not look right for me. EDIT: I just uncommented the rest of the code except for the last main function. I got a 'memory could not be read' error. I am looking into it now.Sorry that was me tweaking because it didnt work, so i was looking what caused the error... The first main is the right one.... GreetingsRed Knight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mamutas Posted May 17, 2003 Report Share Posted May 17, 2003 Yeah, I figured that out, Red Knight.I had some posts in this thread, where I pour out my frustration with Dev-Cpp IDE. It looks like you are the only other person who tried it, but I understood that you switched back to Borland, right? I am kind curious, are we set with default IDE/compiler or is it still up in the air? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gangsta Posted May 17, 2003 Report Share Posted May 17, 2003 don't think anyone would pay attention to what the default ide is even if adopted. Never seen any other group have one before and IDEs are like dressing and haircut choices. There some programmers who will use nothing but VI while others like a fancy IDE that they found years ago and works. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red knight Posted May 17, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 17, 2003 (edited) don't think anyone would pay attention to what the default ide is even if adopted. Never seen any other group have one before and IDEs are like dressing and haircut choices. There some programmers who will use nothing but VI while others like a fancy IDE that they found years ago and works.The point is to have a nice makefile generation facility without needing to resort to automake tools that are a pain in the a.s.s to understand and use. And that makes things difficult for the sake of difficulty and feature creep. One of the first things that i had agreed 100% with my GUI Course teachers is that if users dont get the things working right the first time, most lose their interest (it happend to me with Dev-Cpp)... Let emacs or vi for those that like them, the truth is that they are not suitable to Real, Production development (why you guess that most high profile development houses use CodeWarrior, Borland, MSVC or Inhouse IDEs for development. I bet is not because they like to spend lots of money in licences or development, thats for sure. ) GreetingsRed Knight Edited May 17, 2003 by red knight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mamutas Posted May 17, 2003 Report Share Posted May 17, 2003 I will say it here: Dev-Cpp sucks. It is not robust enough to take on seriously. At least the latest beta... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mamutas Posted May 18, 2003 Report Share Posted May 18, 2003 All righty. Here is what I have found during past 2 days of fighting for life with those pesky IDEs. This is not the best probably, but I got it working for me. If anyone can come up with better suggestions fill free to announce them. So far, I suggest we stick with following configuration (and maybe even call it 'the official standard toolset for Xenocide on Win32). 1) Install latest beta (beta 5 version 4.9.8.0) of Dev-Cpp from www.bloodshed.net. This is your IDE. You will use it to open project file, organize file and folder and to compile code.2) Get Insight debugger (I have GNU gdb 5.0 (20001125-1)) from www.bloodshed.net and unzip it into your Dev-Cpp install location. That will break Dev-Cpp debugger and it will not work anymore. But not to worry. It was not working anyways. You will use it for debugging. You will start gdb from Dev-Cpp\bin directory and that is your debugger. I am really frustrated and dissappointed in that set of tools what we have. It is really painful to use them after NICE Visual C++ debugger. But all these mentioned above tools are free, so we will stick to them for now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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