KDevelop Progress: Overview of New Features

The CVS version of KDevelop (a.k.a.
"Gideon") continues to improve, both stability-wise and in the feature
department. Several new features of interest include the ability to easily
attach the debugger to crashed applications inside KDevelop by clicking on a
button
in Dr. Konqi; the beginnings of integration of KCachegrind (screenshot) by Roberto Raggi, the programmer behind Gideon's solid C++ support; Qt
Designer file preview support (.ui) in the file selector; and support
for additional programming and scripting languages
such as bash.

Rumors of support for Palm PilotTM development also abound...

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Comments

by chris_k (not verified)

I'm so impressed by KDevelop3 that I've written a poem :)

-------
Father says to son while writing on Emacs
that all modern IDEs are fscking prone to bugs
"They are also bloated, can I say it better?
bugs and features always come together!"

"Don't disturb me Father in kde-api lecture
Gideon is stable thanks to plugin architecture!"
-------

Waiting for beta!

by Steve (not verified)

Can anyone familiar with both Eclipse and KDevelop(Gideon)
comment on how KDevelop stacks up with regard to support
for refactoring?

More generally (forgive me - I'm still using XEmacs), how does
KDevelop for Java compare to Eclipse, and how does Eclipse
for C++ compare to KDevelop?

by moro (not verified)

Eclipse has the best refactoring tools that I've ever seen in an IDE. Such functiontionalty isn't there in kdevelop yet, but I guess someone could create a plugin for it. It would be non-trivial to make one that compares to Eclipse's refactoring tools however; they are extremely intelligent.

For Java development, I generally prefer Eclipse (because of good refactoring support and junit support).. For C++, I generally prefer kdevelop (kdevelop has historically been a C++-only IDE, and as such, it has great support for it)

by Jens (not verified)

Hi

>Eclipse has the best refactoring tools that I've ever seen in an IDE.

IntelliJ Idea has the best refactoring tools. The IDE is much more powerfull than Eclipse.

- Jens

by chillin (not verified)

I've been running KDevelop Beta 4 since it came out (beta 3 was too buggy), and I'm very impressed with all the features and functionality. It appears to be a completley full featured, professional grade IDE. I only have 2 problems with it though:

1) After highlighting some text, you have to either hit ctrl+c or go to the menubar just to copy it, as opposed to the traditional option on the right click menu

2) Sometimes, when you're writing a quick/small/test program, it's way too much overhead to have to create an entire project, and KDevelop doesn't support single file compilation. In those situations, I either use Anjuta or just fire up KWrite and compile the program from the command line. Maybe a lightweight or 'quick' mode for KDevelop should be implemented ?

Anyway, these both are just minor things, and I usually just try to work arround them (because I feel KDevelop is worth it:)

by Alex (not verified)

WOW, the Kdevelop website is ancient. Its in desperate need for updates. I mean come on, even the features page is ancient:

"KDevelop 1.1 even incudes KDE 2/Qt 2 frameworks for those developers that want to stay on the bleeding edge of KDE development."

Yes, KDE 2 is definetely bleeding edge.

and on the Graphics page, there shouldn't be 3 screenshots sections, jsut make 1 and have a "next ->" link.

Even the press is ancient, Linux Tag 2001?

The software used on the site is also old, phorum, taht thing totally sucks when you have something like PHPBB and you alrady have a space on KDE-Forum.org here:
http://kde-forum.org/viewforum.php?f=11 there should be a link.

Links page is out dated too, listing mosfet's site as a KDE 2 development site and even listing broken links.

The documentation is ancient too, the suer manual's last update was in 1999.

Really this is pathetic and it happens like this to a lot of KDE projects! Even Konqueror's page has the last news item in 2002 while so many exciting things have happened to it. In addition KDE websites were supposed to adopt the new design, but many flagship software websites ave not been updated like Koffice's website.

Seriously the KD Eproject websites are rarely updated, the dot and kde.org seem to be in the minority of websites being updated regularly. THe documentation also sucks.

I would be happy to help make the KDevlop website better by providing a new design and updating whatever content I can if you want.

by Papa (not verified)

Why not go and fix it then? Developers generally don't care about websites because they either 1). don't care about the website much or 2). rather code.

It often takes non-Developers to do such things, and unfortunatly, nobody has stepped up for kdevelop. Ajunta actually does have someone who updates the website (and is not a developer)..

Similiar situation for documentation. Doc-writers were extremely active during the KDE 2.x era, and have seemed to be much more busy lately. My suggestion is to submit bugreports when you see outdated docs, and if possible, send a patch. Often for things like this, bug reports crop up, but there is nobody to fix it :(

by Alex (not verified)

I want to try to adapt the Kdevelop website to the KDE.org design if I can.

However, I will be gone for about a month and a half so I won't be able to do much except this week.

BTW: Why aren't there as amny active doc writters WE NEED THEM! ;)

by Amilcar Lucas (not verified)

Could you please drop a line to [email protected] ?
The people there can tell you how you can help.

Thanks

by Alex (not verified)

and I heard from people her ethat Gideon is a lot better. We need a website to show the quality of the program, currently the website for Kdevelop will just turn people off.

Compare for yourself:
http://anjuta.sourceforge.net
http://www.kdevelop.org

Yes, your right, the Kdevelop website does not stand comparrison.

by Datschge (not verified)

There are actually still sites making use of frames? o.O

by David (not verified)

Frames are crap. Something like Zope's standard headers and footers make a much better job, and make things much more expandable.

by Alex (not verified)

Yes, and they are used wisely for that website.

by Chakie (not verified)

Is it possible to get Gideon to understand Emacs keybindings, or rather, Unix keybindings? The C-c, C-v and C-x thingies are from the Windows world, there are so any of us that are used to the Unix/Emacs way of doing stuff. I've used Gideon a fair deal and like it a lot. It has a few bugs but those seem to get fixed pretty fast, but the keybindings irritate me every time I use it. I always use the Emacs ones, and they wreak havoc inside Gideon. :)

by Mike (not verified)

Actually, I've had a similar thought to this numerous times, but never got around to posting a message about it (too busy coding). Why can't KDevelop be given a feature where you can select between a number of different predefined keybindings, and/or create your own, and be able to share them on the KDevelop website (in case you create a custom one which matches an editor whose keybindings you're used to using, and want to contribute it for others who are used to those same keybindings)? I think that would make life a lot easier for anyone who is switching KDevelop, or just plain prefers a different set of keybindings.

by Sean Fraley (not verified)

Gideon's support for developing and compiling libraries needs a lot of improvement. This is especially important on a unix system, since putting the underlying mechanisms in a library, then writing a front end is a fundamental concept of unix development. In it's current state, you have to completely rework the structure of subprojects and targets to create a project format that makes library development efficient and pleasant.

by Amilcar Lucas (not verified)

I'm a KDevelop developer and user, I use it to code linux libraries.

I don't see your point. Can you elaborate?

Thanks

by Sean Fraley (not verified)

I don't think any of the choices for C++ project types works well as is for developing a library, or at least not one specifically for KDE and KDevelop. It's little things. The target for the src subproject being set to a program. No subproject set up for testing the library. I think that there needs to be a project type that you can select for creating generic libraries in C or C++. It should have the src subproject set to build a libtool library, and have a seperate subproject for testing the library. At current, with a little reworking of subdirectories and targets, I can get things set up pretty well, but it would be nice to have a project type that did this for me.

by Paul Eggleton (not verified)

This is slightly OT, but can someone explain to me why we have KCachegrind but nobody seems to be interested in integrating Valgrind itself (well, more specifically, the memcheck "skin") into a GUI/IDE? Surely finding and fixing memory bugs is more important that improving performance...

Of course, this is not to detract from the recent KDevelop/Gideon work, which is excellent :)

by AC (not verified)

Because valgrind is useful without a GUI. You just run you programm on the command line and get some output when valgrind detects something unusual. But cachegrind, OTOH, is almost unusable without some visualization. There's a strong need for visualization, and that's why people have the incentive to do it.

by Amilcar Lucas (not verified)

Yes, valgrind is already integrated.

by not_regisitered (not verified)

dark schema for the text editor (ie black background that doesnt affect the syntax highlighting readability) and syntax highlighting improvements (i find vim is the best i have seen).

variable/class/etc name completion popup in text editor is kind of cool (like anjuta does) although at times it can piss you off.

these things arent exactly directly problems of kdevelop but there use kwrite so they inherit them.

by Zack Rusin (not verified)

Please note that KDevelop now supports Mozilla XUL files in the same way it supports Qt Designer .ui files, so it can be used as a Mozilla IDE :)
A screenshot showing KaXulPart interface in Konqueror is here: http://www.automatix.de/~zack/kaxulpart.png and get the code from kdenonbeta/kaxul .

by jef peeraer (not verified)

this is great and exactly what i am looking for. which version of kdevelop ( or kde version ) supports this ?

by jef peeraer (not verified)

can you explain a little bit more. do i create the xul files with qt-designer ?