I have been searching for an open source c++ IDE for some time now. I have not yet found a single IDE that is a perfect fit.
When you develop something small, an editor like vim/kate/emacs can be sufficient, but when you work with larger projects created by other people, things become a litte awkward (or at least for me). ctag can help. Using doxygen to generate browsable code can also help a great deal. Create a config file to generate all documentation even for uncommented code and that includes the source in the generated documentation. Monodevelop has a c++ component in the IDE, but for some reason (mono,novell,microsoft deals) I have lost interest in it. My criticism may not be valid though, it is political. I would suggest looking at CMake. You can use CMake scripts to configure the build for a project independant of an IDE. CMake can also generate project files for Eclipse CDT, KDevelop and some other very popular c++ IDE that will not be mentioned here. KDevelop is undergoing a complete rewrite. Looks like something commond to projects with a name starting with "K". It may take some time, but when finished it may be worthwhile? Eclipse is not that bad. Make sure that you get a version of Eclipse without any java plugins installed, they normally add a bunch of useless stuff. Creating an IDE is no small task. If you would like to dedecate some time, have a look at the current efforts going into kdevelop. I have heard of people that mainly target linux using the IDE which name will not be mentioned. Guess that's an indication that there is a need for a better open source linux IDE. A good step may be to ask the guys on the KDE lists (or some other big project) what IDE they are using? But, you may get a lot of frowns and the answer of emacs/vim. Regards Dirk
