About wxDevIDE
So, you are interested? Glance over the summary real quick and you'll have a basic idea of what it is all about.
Summary:
If you are a computer person and want to spend some of your hobby time working on a productive project that will benefit people, here is one opportunity that you may be interested in.
My name is Nuklear Zelph. Well at least that is my screen name right. I recently started a project on an open source community called SourceForge.net. Unfortunately I have not had time for the short while it was up to work on it, but the good news is, that was because I was helping the people this project is aimed to help also.
wxDevIDE, is going to be a cloned interface integrated development environment like Dev-C++. The gui and basic behavior will be the same, as its primary purpose is to bring the ide to developers and whomever wishes to use it, on platforms other than Windows. You may have several questions regarding the direction of the project, but having thought it through and having some inside knowledge, it seems to be the best direction to take. (see below)
Those of us who are working on wxDevIDE do not need to worry about how Dev is built inside, but we do need to keep in mind that Dev users should like to use it. We will be making it pluggable, one of the biggest weaknesses that Dev itself has, lacking of plugin support.
I don't need only programmers.
A webmaster who can help bring a good design to the website. You may ask for a designers help, but I am just not cut out for that sort of thing. We can talk about what should be on the site and how it will look. It'd be nice if you knew PHP.
Programmers of course!
I don't just need people who can write gui's. I also need people who can make a pluggable compiler interface and debugger interface. You are free to look at Code::Blocks for some help with this. We just need to decide on how it works and then you can do what you please. The gui programmers need to know or be willing to learn and use wxWidgets. The first thing we will do is build a set of derived components to emulate the "XP Theme" of Dev.
And there are a few other jobs that need to be done:
A release tech,
mostly to keep the release repository clean and that there is a GNU/Linux and Windows line ending source for snapshots.
A build manager,
someone to work with the subproject teams to make sure that there are a few project supported build systems that always work. Like using configure scripts in GNU/Linux and a couple common project files in Windows. (and OSX hopefully)
Subproject leaders,
someone who can help keep the developers in a sub project focused and "seeing the same thing" and who can be a guiding hand in overcoming obstacles for it.
That is the basics, if you still feel interested look at the information below. If you are certain that you want to help me, look at the bottom of the page for contact information.
Why are we going to rewrite Dev in another language and toolkit?
Several reasons. First off, even if we went with Borland and revamped the code to work in Kylix, that would be a massive rewrite of existing code. Yes that does save a great deal of time with the gui and such though.
There are at least two reasons to not do that:
First, we only add GNU/Linux to the list of supported platforms, it is a great improvement none the less.
Second and more concerning, Borland has dropped support for Kylix and that also requires people to get a commercial product to build from source.
What about using the same source code and porting to Lazarus?
Because Lazarus is not a clone of Delphi, it has a different and poorly documented vcl and it would take almost as much work to port to Lazarus as rewrite it in C++.
why choose C++? wxWidgets?
- Because like stated above, we would need to rewrite the entire code base anyway.
- Building the ide in the language it is designed for has a better change of getting support and it can be built using itself.
- C++ is much more popular than Delphi is and there are many compilers for it, several of which are free and even open.
- We can support more platforms by using wxWidgets since it is designed to be a cross platform toolkit.
- And because I hate Delphi and am a wxWidgets programmer myself.
Why do this at all? Why not use Wine?
My favorite ide is Dev-C++. I use the wx version because it has a wxWidgets form designer and I build programs with wxwidgets. There are a few things that have been added to the wx version that I don't care about, and some that are very nice. We will be primarily supporting the Bloodshed version since it is more popular and as a tribute to the original developers and creator, Colin Laplace. After we have a stable working version of Bloodshed we can add some other functionality like docking, but we will keep the Bloodshed option open for people by putting in a macro to define that style at compile time. Also, Wine can let you build Windows apps on GNU/Linux with Dev, but you cannot build GNU/Linux apps with Wine and Dev on GNU/Linux.
what if I hate macros?
Then you hate wxWidgets too! It uses many macros. There are reasons for and against, but the best reason to use them is it is a simple way to allow different compile time options without maintaining several versions of the same code just to avoid using them. We will not need to support that many as a project anyway. Two that I know of are: debug and Bloodshed. (or legacy) The second only really applies to the gui anyway and will not be added for a while.
There is already Code::Blocks, why not just use that?
Some of us like Visual Studio, Anjuta, Code::Blocks, whatever. Some of us like Dev. If you feel a moral obligation to a team or whatever for the ide you use, so be it, this is not the project for you. (Unless it's to Dev.) If you just want to have something Fun to do and don't care too much, then who cares. I don't care how you build or compile your part of the code, it just needs to work correctly with GCC/MinGW and be cross platform. (One of the biggest things: use a / instead of \ always in hard coded paths or whatever.)
Basically what I want to do is bring the ide to people on other platforms as I already said. But I also want to make it flexible so that you can make it do what you want it to. It will support plugins, but it will also run standalone unlike Code::Blocks. a Bloodshed like build will have the GCC/MinGW and GDB compiler/debugger plugins statically linked. When we get there, the extended version may not, but that one will also not be catering to the Dev audience.
If you are interested in helping or have further questions email me at:
[email protected]
I just don't want to have some idiot trying to harass myself and those who join the project because some clueless M$ guru finds out that he/she can get source code for free. Or that they feel that this is a waist of time. If so, then go do something YOU feel is productive and leave the rest of us alone.
This is a hobby, not a job. We can get along and work things out as a friendly team, not as a bunch of peasants under an evil dictator. (Although I hope your job is not that bad.)
Remember you don't need to program to help out. Thanks for taking a look, Nuklear Zelph.
