Re: [gentoo-user] perfect IDE

[Geralt]

On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 9:32 PM, Andreas Niederl <rico32@×××.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Andrei Hanganu wrote:
>> helo group,
>>
>> i've been trying the past 2-3 years to find the most usable and nice ide
>> for c/c++ code writing. I've been through vim/vim + plugins/emacs +
>> different modes/anjuta/kdevelop/codeblocks/eclipse/netbeans ... every
>> single one of them has at least one drawback.
>
> I'm thinking the more I get to know Vim and the available plugins, the
> more it becomes like an IDE to me. I guess the same is true for Emacs.
>
> My advice would be to take on of those or any other open IDE and learn
> and extend them to the point that it's perfect for you.
>
>
I can only give the same advice. I'm mainly an Emacs user, so I think
I can fill in the parts you've missed below :-)
Oh and (to everybody) Emacs is one thing especially: customizable. You
have to work a bit with Emacs to really understand this (because most
editors/programs are customizable these days). But enough advertising
;-)

>> In short words, i am looking for an ide that can do this:
>> - syntax highlighting
>> - concurrent editing of multiple files (splitting)
>> - tabs or buffer list
>> - file browser
>> - regex search/replace
>
> Both Vim and Emacs can do these basic features.
> Vim even provides a mechanism for saving and restoring editing sessions.
>
>
A file browser is provided by ECB and I have never encountered any
minibuffer issues you've mentioned below. I also never encountered any
incompatibilities between different customizations and I'm running a
lot. Of course you can't use two that do the same thing, but I think
that's clear (and usually the last one overrides the first, so no
issues there).
Restoring and saving sessions is, of course, possible, too :-), see here[1]

>> - autocomplete (on the fly, not on demand, and maybe smart? - identify
>> structures/classes )
>
> Haven't tried it yet, but for Vim word_complete.vim[1] seems to be what
> you're looking for. You should also have a look at Omnicompletion.
>
> As Emacs has hooks for nearly everything it should be doable with it as
> well.
>
>
It's possible in Emacs, and how to set it up see here[2], the package
you'll see in the link, CEDET, is a complete IDE framework and not
just auto-completion (but you can use only parts of it!), it's used
for example in ECB and JDEE[3]

>> - project manager
>
> Don't know about that but it would be nice to have simpler project
> specific settings for Emacs/Vim.
>
>
For Emacs there's EDE, it's part of CEDET.

>> - symbol list/browser current editing buffer
>
> That's pretty much ctags/etags, maybe cscope.
>
>
And in addition you can browse this stuff with CEDET, see[1] for details.


>> - flexible build options that include scons, not just makefile
>
> You can put the following in ~/.vimrc:
> autocmd BufEnter ~/path/to/project/* set makeprg=scons
>
>
In Emacs you can use whatever you want to build your project, because
there is no classic restriction called project like all these new IDEs
have, but if you want there's EDE.


>> - code folding (with detection of blocks)
>
> Vim does it[2]; Emacs seems to have some kind of FoldingMode according
> to Google.
>
>
Yes, there is, it's called hs-minor-mode.

>> - lightweight/ergonomic interface (i dislike space being occupied by the
>> bar that displays the line numbers, with a padding of 10px for example)
>
> Both of them are very customisable in this regard.
>
>
If you've customized Emacs alot, and for Vim that probably true too,
the startup is a bit slower, but you have several possibilities here:
1) start Emacs as server (that's just a normal Emacs but clients can
attach) and edit your files by running emacsclient and in Emacs 23
(not yet released) you can daemonize Emacs and attach as many
instances of Emacs as you want (even from ttys and X at the same
time!)
2) start Emacs -Q (no customizations will be loaded)
3) use a vanilla Vim (which I do often when I'm editing config files)

>> i don't desire gdb or valgrind integration, but would be a +
>
> Emacs features gdb integration and there's Clewn[3] for GVim.
> As for me, I'm rather using a separate screen[4] window in the same session.
>
>
Why don't you desire that? What's the purpose of an IDE if you don't
want an integrated debugger? In Emacs run gdb and then
gdb-many-windows (then debugging looks the same as in all these IDEs,
you have a stack window, local variables window, source view,
registers and so on).

>
> Regards,
> Andi
>
> [1] http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=73
> [2] http://www.linux.com/articles/114138
> [3] http://clewn.sourceforge.net/
> [4] http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/
>
>


Oh and be aware that there's no single way in Emacs to do something
and I've told you just the way I do it or the one I know of.




Geralt.



[1]http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/SessionManagement
[2]http://xtalk.msk.su/~ott/en/writings/emacs-devenv/EmacsCedet.html
[3]http://jdee.sourceforge.net/