Ten top Linux and open-source developer tools (ZDNet.uk) [LWN.net]

ZDNet.uk presents ten favorite development tools. "Without sound development tools, you will not be able to capitalise on the best qualities of Linux. Fortunately, there is no shortage of Linux and open-source development tools. But if you are a new user, you might not know which utilities to choose, so here are 10 outstanding tools that will help take your development to another level."

to post comments

Not worth reading, IMO

Posted May 1, 2009 18:17 UTC (Fri) by sagrailo (guest, #48054) [Link] (5 responses)

Stuff like Anjuta/Glade/Kdevelop on the list, and no Vi/Emacs, no mention of any kind of VCS, no Valgrind or OProfile or something alike... Gimme a break.

Not worth reading, IMO

Posted May 1, 2009 18:53 UTC (Fri) by proski (guest, #104) [Link] (3 responses)

Better yet:

6. GDB
GDB is not really a developer tool, but it is a tool that most open-source, and many Windows, developers consider essential. GDB is the GNU Debugger.

Not worth reading, IMO

Posted May 1, 2009 19:06 UTC (Fri) by pr1268 (guest, #24648) [Link]

GDB is not really a developer tool

I disagree. Countless times have I used GDB to figure out where (and why) my program crashed. If we all developed *perfect* programs every time, then we wouldn't need debugging tools.

As for sagrailo's comment, I sort of agree with your criticism of the lack of Valgrind/OProfile (or similar), but I think that the list provided by the author is a fairly well-rounded and diverse list of development tools (even if I don't use most of them). Hey, at least Mr. Walden bothered to include GCC and Make! :)

Not worth reading, IMO

Posted May 1, 2009 23:50 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

That's stunningly silly, agreed. The lack of valgrind is even more
amazing: if there's one debugging tool I consider utterly essential in
C/C++ development, it's valgrind (much more useful than GDB, normally).
From the prominence of bluefish I suspect that the author of this article
is a web developer asked to write an article on development tools in
general...

bluefish, well, its listed features, include undo, search/replace,
multi-file support, antialiased text, multiple input encodings, syntax
highlighting and, um, a user-defined toolbar. From that alone I'd say it's
pedestrian.

The description of how GCC determines what compiler to use to compile your
code is wrong, and the correct method is in the manual (hint: look at the
end of the filename).

'Make is a Linux utility' only in the sense that it comes with Linux. This
really is a traditional Unix tool (although GNU Make knocks the original
makes' socks off).

Not worth reading, IMO

Posted May 2, 2009 19:39 UTC (Sat) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]

"""
bluefish, well, its listed features, include... From that alone I'd say it's
pedestrian.
"""

Bluefish is OK. But not stellar. And in the years that I used it, I can't recall any added features.

Not worth reading, IMO

Posted May 2, 2009 0:02 UTC (Sat) by whacker (subscriber, #55546) [Link]

Any article that makes a list of stuff is usually written by a lazy writer to fill up space.

Ten top Linux and open-source developer tools (ZDNet.uk)

Posted May 1, 2009 19:01 UTC (Fri) by dv1m (guest, #58319) [Link] (3 responses)

shouldn't the title be "Ten top open-source developer tools" instead of "Ten top Linux and open-source developer tools" ?

Ten top Linux and open-source developer tools (ZDNet.uk)

Posted May 1, 2009 19:24 UTC (Fri) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (2 responses)

No, because Linux is not just open source, it's Free Software. They can't quite bring themselves to publish the latter expression, but they do recognize a need for the distinction.

Ten top Linux and open-source developer tools (ZDNet.uk)

Posted May 1, 2009 20:53 UTC (Fri) by vonbrand (guest, #4458) [Link]

What would be the difference of open source development tools and tools available under Linux? Why not tools popular on, say, the BSDs?

What would be the operational difference between "open source" and "free software"?

Ten top Linux and open-source developer tools (ZDNet.uk)

Posted May 4, 2009 15:56 UTC (Mon) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

Software under the BSD licences (original or modified) are free software too, according to the man who invented the term and according to any other reasonable opinion.

Don't underestimate Gedit

Posted May 2, 2009 0:01 UTC (Sat) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] (5 responses)

Yeah, I know. Some people think of Gedit as a sort of Notepad for Linux. But with the standard plugins package installed it blows the doors off of Bluefish. With a judicious selection of 3rd party plugins, it gets even better than that. I used to use (the somewhat stagnant) Bluefish. But now that I've discovered Gedit's true potential, I'd never go back.

Don't underestimate Gedit

Posted May 2, 2009 0:05 UTC (Sat) by whacker (subscriber, #55546) [Link] (3 responses)

One really annoying bug with gedit is that it makes it main window sticky by default.

Otherwise, I agree, its a very nice environment. One Mac guy I know started using Gedit when he switched to a Linux box.

Don't underestimate Gedit

Posted May 2, 2009 5:20 UTC (Sat) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] (2 responses)

"""
One really annoying bug with gedit is that it makes it main window sticky by default.
"""

Really? I've been using gedit for development over the last couple of Gnome versions and, of course, used it for occasional odd lot stuff for many releases previous to that, and that has never been the case for me.

Don't underestimate Gedit

Posted May 2, 2009 11:09 UTC (Sat) by Kit (guest, #55925) [Link] (1 responses)

Perhaps it's an issue with the GP's window manager configuration?

Don't underestimate Gedit

Posted May 5, 2009 3:57 UTC (Tue) by whacker (subscriber, #55546) [Link]

http://www.mail-archive.com/awesome@naquadah.org/msg00264...

Apparently, it was a bug in Gedit. But it appears to have been fixed in the latest update :)

Don't underestimate Gedit

Posted May 4, 2009 13:32 UTC (Mon) by mjthayer (guest, #39183) [Link]

The thing that annoys me most about gedit (apart from its strange select and paste behaviour) is the lack of ctags support. I wanted to write a very basic ctags plugin, but but currently most of my non-work time is taken up by a small child, and I never got around to it...

Ten top Linux and open-source developer tools (ZDNet.uk)

Posted May 2, 2009 8:45 UTC (Sat) by juhl (guest, #33245) [Link] (10 responses)

Tools I use daily (or at least often):

1. Emacs - there's just no comparison to other editors or IDE's. Once you've learned emacs properly there's no faster/more efficient way to edit source code.

2. GCC - a great compiler and since GCC 4, also a great C++ compiler.

3. GDB - When you need a debugger no need to look further than GDB (and if you want a frontend, then GUD is great, or there's DDD if you prefer).

4. Valgrind - If you don't already use Valgrind religiously, then I'll almost guarantee you that your code has memory leaks, uses uninitialized memory or other nasties like that. It's simply a *must use* tool.

5. FlexeLint - compiler warnings on steroids. Good for finding obscure potential problem spots in your code.

6. gmake and bash - for all your conditional compilation and automation needs.

Ten top Linux and open-source developer tools (ZDNet.uk)

Posted May 2, 2009 13:25 UTC (Sat) by tnoo (subscriber, #20427) [Link] (3 responses)

absolutely agree. since there should be ten: 7. Python (including scipy, ...): programming made easy for every programming need that needs not be extremely high performance.

Ten top Linux and open-source developer tools (ZDNet.uk)

Posted May 2, 2009 16:37 UTC (Sat) by pr1268 (guest, #24648) [Link] (2 responses)

Um, Python is a programming language, not a development tool.

Although, some of the development tools mentioned in the article could be used to write/debug/test Python source.

Ten top Linux and open-source developer tools (ZDNet.uk)

Posted May 3, 2009 4:33 UTC (Sun) by tnoo (subscriber, #20427) [Link] (1 responses)

Agreed, Python is a programming language, but then also so much more than that.

If bash qualifies as developer tool (which it certainly does), Python (and improved interactive interpreters like Ipython, do as well. Automating certain processes (like remote compilation) with bash is useful, but very much limited by the simplicity of the scripting language. Automating complicated processes with Python is much easier (at least for me) as the syntax is uniform, string operations are straightforward, and toolboxes for about everything are already there.

So, besides being a nice programming language, the interactive Python/Ipython environment is a great productivity tool that in many cases can completely replace a shell.

Python the toolmaker's tool

Posted May 4, 2009 22:11 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

Agreed. After a couple of months writing a set of tools in Python I have written (also in Python):

a licensifier to change the license header,
a text replacement tool for package changes,
a tool to convert text file configs to Python code, and back,
and a build system to distribute my code in one file.

All of this has saved me countless hours of file mangling. (At the cost of countless hours of fun hacking.) I would say that Python is an ideal tool to write dev tools.

Ten top Linux and open-source developer tools (ZDNet.uk)

Posted May 3, 2009 3:57 UTC (Sun) by ringerc (subscriber, #3071) [Link] (2 responses)

I'd agree with all that ... except gdb.

GDB is a decent debugger for single-threaded plain C code.

It's a real pain for C++ code, and for multi-threaded code. It doesn't understand STL containers without plugins and assistance; its threading support is unlovely to use, etc etc etc.

I actually find it to be worth enduring the excruciating pain of Windows C/C++ development in order to be able to use MS Visual Studio's debugger, which is absolutely wonderful especially combined with VC++'s checked/debug STL. In fact, I often use VC++'s debugger, then switch to Linux and run my code through Valgrind. It's yet another good reason to keep your code portable.

Ten top Linux and open-source developer tools (ZDNet.uk)

Posted May 3, 2009 7:32 UTC (Sun) by shishir (subscriber, #20844) [Link]

umm..cscope+ctags+vim anyone?...fast, and efficient.It is perhaps the most powerful combo I have used. I use this combo to great effect to write code, browse code and copy+paste code :)

Ten top Linux and open-source developer tools (ZDNet.uk)

Posted May 3, 2009 15:00 UTC (Sun) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link]

GDB is a decent debugger for single-threaded plain C code.

It's a real pain for C++ code, and for multi-threaded code. It doesn't understand STL containers without plugins and assistance; its threading support is unlovely to use, etc etc etc.

You might want to take a look at Project Archer, a GDB branch that is primarily dedicated to improving the C++ debugging experience. One part of Archer is pretty printing STL containers, which is implemented through Python GDB Scripting.

Tom Tromey wrote a couple of blog posts on the various GDB python scripting extensions you can now do with Archer (and soon standard GDB).

There has also been work done by CodeSourcery on Non-stop multi-threaded debugging.

There are also a couple of screencasts by Red Hat tools engineers showing some of the GDB/Archer improvements:

Fedora should already have packaged GDB Archer, and a lot of the above will be, or has already been merged for GDB 7.0.

Ten top Linux and open-source developer tools (ZDNet.uk)

Posted May 4, 2009 0:53 UTC (Mon) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link] (1 responses)

> 5. FlexeLint - compiler warnings on steroids. Good for finding obscure potential problem spots in your code.

Err.... FlexeLint is _not_ open source, by any stretch of the imagination.

Ten top Linux and open-source developer tools (ZDNet.uk)

Posted May 4, 2009 6:35 UTC (Mon) by juhl (guest, #33245) [Link]

> > 5. FlexeLint - compiler warnings on steroids. Good for finding obscure
> > potential problem spots in your code.
>
> Err.... FlexeLint is _not_ open source, by any stretch of the imagination.

True, but it's damn useful ;)

Substitute some other lint if you want an open source one.... Like splint.

Ten top Linux and open-source developer tools (ZDNet.uk)

Posted May 4, 2009 7:46 UTC (Mon) by tstover (guest, #56283) [Link]

top 10 in no particular order

gcc
gdb
valgrind
ddd
scons
gtk parasite
gmake
pdb
cl.exe (ducks)
generic text editors

Ten top Linux and open-source developer tools (ZDNet.uk)

Posted May 4, 2009 14:57 UTC (Mon) by dv1m (guest, #58319) [Link]

As the ZDNet article credits at the end, this article was based on another article written by the same author and posted earlier at TechRepublic.com (URL: http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=579). The original article at TechRepublic has many comments from readers.