Nice C/C++ IDE: CodeBlocks

[Ron Murawski]

I've done some testing of the free, open-source CodeBlocks IDE for C/C++ coding and I'm very impressed with it. It's got lots of nifty features and, best of all, is not only cross-platform (Windows and Linux), but supports many free compilers as well:
* GCC (MingW / Linux GCC)
* MSVC++
* Digital Mars
* Borland C++ 5.5
* Open Watcom

Check out the 'Screenshots' page: it will quickly tell you all you need to know.

I set up my own chess engine and switched from compiler to compiler. I was dismayed that it would not build for some of them. I set warnings to max and finally teased out the problem: I had assumed that 'char' was signed but, it turns out, this is a compiler-dependent decision. If I want my code to be truly portable (and I do!) I will have to fix this problem.

The 'nightly build' releases of CodeBlocks have more features and bugfixes than the 'stable release', but you'll need to be running Win XP in order to take advantage of it. I think this program can be useful for many chess programmers.

Best regards,
Ron

[Josu? Forte]

Thanks Ron!

I downloaded and installed it without problems.

Josu

[Ferdinand]

I've done some testing of the free, open-source CodeBlocks IDE for C/C++ coding and I'm very impressed with it. It's got lots of nifty features and, best of all, is not only cross-platform (Windows and Linux), but supports many free compilers as well:
* GCC (MingW / Linux GCC)
* MSVC++
* Digital Mars
* Borland C++ 5.5
* Open Watcom

Check out the 'Screenshots' page: it will quickly tell you all you need to know.

I set up my own chess engine and switched from compiler to compiler. I was dismayed that it would not build for some of them. I set warnings to max and finally teased out the problem: I had assumed that 'char' was signed but, it turns out, this is a compiler-dependent decision. If I want my code to be truly portable (and I do!) I will have to fix this problem.

The 'nightly build' releases of CodeBlocks have more features and bugfixes than the 'stable release', but you'll need to be running Win XP in order to take advantage of it. I think this program can be useful for many chess programmers.

Best regards,
Ron

Hello Ron,

Many thanks for this information, I got a noticeable increase in speed using this compiler (GCC) which is included in the package.
I was using Dev C++ before.

Best regards,
Ferdinand



[/quote]

[Ron Murawski]

Hi Ferdinand and Josu?,

Dev-C++ hasn't released a new version since February 2005. That's a very, very long time since the last release for an open source project -- it might be a dead project.

Best regards,
Ron

[Vladimir Medvedev]

Very nice IDE. I plan to use it as my primary tool in developing new version of GreKo.

One question: does anybody know how to use it's SVN capabilities?

[Ron Murawski]

Very nice IDE. I plan to use it as my primary tool in developing new version of GreKo.

One question: does anybody know how to use it's SVN capabilities?

Hi Vladimir,

First of all you need a functional svn server with your source code in the repository. Once that's established properly you get username/password access. Setting up a svn server very much resembles setting up a simple web server.

I have had a svn server for my engine source code for the past year or so and it works quite well. You don't need CodeBlocks to access the repository.

Best regards,
Ron

[Richard Allbert]

Thanks for the link!

I was using devcpp, which seemed good, but this is excellent.

Richard

[Vladimir Medvedev]

I have SVN installed on my machine. But I use local repository, no server. Command-line SVN interface works fine, Tortoise shell-extension too. No doubt, I can continue my work with SVN from command shell, the question is how to configure C:B for these operations... For example, where should I specify url of existing repository?

[Ron Murawski]

I have SVN installed on my machine. But I use local repository, no server. Command-line SVN interface works fine, Tortoise shell-extension too. No doubt, I can continue my work with SVN from command shell, the question is how to configure C:B for these operations... For example, where should I specify url of existing repository?

I have no experience with local svn repositories or with using CodeBlocks w/svn.

Perhaps you can post your question to the CodeBlocks messageboard:
http://forums.codeblocks.org/

Ron

[Pedro Castro]

It is interesting the combination of IDE with mingw, because it is free, my program has compiled without changing a single line, but I find with MSVC++ 2005 express that is 10% quicker in the executable.

[Pedro Castro]

And now, Microsoft visualc++ 2005 express is free.