[ale] UNIX equivalent of Windows DLL

[Russell Enderby]

Actually not too long ago, it was mentioned that Borland's entire compiler 
suite would be ported over to Linux.  That is my favorite development suite 
anyhow.  It will bring thousands of apps to Linux overnight.  Linux is in 
real good shape.
Russell

-----Original Message-----
 From:	John Mills [SMTP:Jmills at TGA.com]
Sent:	Tuesday, October 19, 1999 2:48 PM
To:	'Kalin Nakov'; ale at ale.org
Subject:	RE: [ale] UNIX equivalent of Windows DLL

Kalin -

KN- 2. Can somebody point out a qood programming environment (IDE) -
KN- something like Microsoft Visual Studio (something simpler can do
KN- certainly, but it must have syntax hilighting and debugging
KN- capabilities)? It may be Linux speciffic, for X Windows or run in a
KN- terminal (console) mode.

I don't know its availability where you are, but I find the Cygnus
'Source-Navigator' quite good. There is an individual version (v.4.2 -
US$150) good for up to 100K lines of source. Builds are driven by Makefiles
so you can target whichever toolset you like. Syntax highlighting is
provided for C/C++. There is a GUI debug window, making it much easier for 
a
beginner to use 'gdb'. The CD copy I bought included both Linux and WinNT
installations (but you are licensed for a single user, single host
installation). It was then sold in a package with Cygnus' GNUPro toolset
(Linux only) for about US$200 total. (You can also build those tools from
free sources, and have good versions already installed in your Linux 
setup.)
I don't know if they are still packaged together.

I know it isn't cheap, but I find it acually does a lot more than my MS
Win** tools: analyzes your project's sources, draws usage graphs, finds
declarations and implementations of functions project-wide or by file, and
some other features. It works fine on embedded development projects, 
driving
cross-gcc tools you can compile. (I have actaully been more successful with
S-N/G-P than with Hitachi's toolset for the same processor.)

For me the other top candidate is venerable 'emacs' ["Eight Megabytes And
Constantly Swapping"] which has two X11 incarnations and runs 'gdb' very
nicely, too: you can compile and debug packages from multiple source
languages and seamlessly step from language to language as one source 
module
calls another. Emacs is scary to start on, but is context aware for a 
_very_
broad spectrum (Ada, C, C++, ... on through LaTex to SGML) so you can do
them all with a single user interface. The price is definitely right, too.

Emacs is not Linux specific - it runs in most unices. (I don't recommend 
the
Win32 version.) It has color bindings, but I found them slow (for SGML), 
and
not very helpful. OTOH I really liked the auto formatting in Ada which 
makes
it easy to create clean-looking sources. I haven't used emacs to 
auto-format
my C sources, but I expect it is as helpful.

Emacs will do almost everything except (AFAIK) change the cat box. Just
start simply and add to your knowledge gradually.

With due respect, I wasn't very happy with 'xwpe' - it seems a bit slow and
unstable and not to do very much - I prefer a couple of terminal windows.

  John Mills, Sr. Software Engineer
  TGA Technologies, Inc.
  100 Pinnacle Way, Suite 140
  Norcross, GA 30071-3633
  e-mail: jmills at tga.com
  Phone: 770-441-2100 ext.124 (voice)
         770-449-7740 (FAX)
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