Re: The start of a C/C++ adventure...
On Tuesday, 9 July 2013 21:16:29 UTC+1, Jorgen Grahn wrote:
On Tue, 2013-07-09, Qu0ll wrote:
...
So, what do I choose then? Well, after researching the various options I
have decided that the *only* language/platform that seems to be truly
portable (in one way or another) is C/C++ and so I am going to devote a
large amount of effort and resources into learning this language(s) and the
associated ecosystem.
...
Armed with the answer to question (1), I would like to then look at the best
compilers and tools. For Windows the general buzz is that
Visual C++ (and I would go straight to VS 2012 or even 2013)
seems the best environment and compiler. For Linux it looks
like I would have to use GCC and perhaps Eclipse. For MacOS
and iOS it looks like clang through XCode but I am not sure
what is available on Android.
[...]
2. What are the best compilers/IDEs and tools for the
various platforms and is it possible to reuse some of the
compilers or tools across multiple platforms? For example,
I know Eclipse runs on most platforms but I am not sure of
the quality of the CDT tools it embodies.
As an Emacs user I feel obliged to say it runs everywhere, always has,
always will. (2) would be a no-brainer for me.
You can say the same for vim. (I suspect that the difference
between emacs and vim is which one you know best. And perhaps
the keyboards you have to use: I find that long stretches of
emacs make my hands hurt, because of the awkward combination of
keys I have to hit simultaneously. Perhaps a better keyboard
would solve that.)
Next I want to investigate issues surrounding the build
pipeline, in particular build and CI tools. For Java I have
used Ant, Maven and (lately) Gradle but for C/C++ the common
ones seem to be good-old "make" and a now CMake so my next
question is:
7. What are the best build tools for C/C++ development that
support cross-platform development, ideally being able to
build native executables for as many platforms as possible
on one single platform?
Another example of the hidden cost of portability. I use Gnu Make
exclusively and am very happy with it, but I suspect that restricts me
to Linux and other Unixes -- which is fine since that's the only
platform I use and have access to.
I use GNU make exclusively too, at least for my own code.
Including my developments under Windows.
Like most powerful tools (e.g. emacs or vim), the learning curve
can be steep. It pays off in the end, however.
--
James