Samuel Jacob's Weblog

For my C projects I was using Notepad++ as my editor/IDE for some time. Although notepad++ is good, it is lacking the integration with a code browser, source control and debugger. I came to know about a new IDE – CodeLitewhen I was searching for ctags for windows. It has integrated support for Subversion, ctags, gdb.

Since it is advertised to have multi-platform GUI, I was little reluctant to install and try(I have tried lot of multi-platform GUI applications and never satisfied with the look and feel of them). But wxWidgets makes the CodeLite to look like native windows application. CodeLite has lot of features and it looks very similar to Microsoft VC++ IDE.

Code browsing is very easy with CodeLite. It is has a very light explorer and also workspace view through which you can browse your project “easily”. You can switch between header and c file “easily” using the “Swap Header/implementation file” in the context menu. Context menus “Goto declaration” and “Goto Implementation” are handy to browse through code quickly.

If you are using cygwin and custom makefile – you can use a script as custom build command – see Notepad++ as IDE post for more details.

I use the following command to build(because I use gcc cross compiler)
[shell]c:\cygwin\bin\bash -l -c ‘cd $ACE_ROOT/src;PATH=/usr/cross/i586-elf/bin/:$PATH:;make 2> err; sed -e “s@\(\/cygdrive\/\)\([a-zA-Z]\)@\2:@g” err; rm err’. [/shell]
And the following command to clean
[shell]c:\cygwin\bin\bash -l -c ‘cd $ACE_ROOT/src;PATH=/usr/cross/i586-elf/bin/:$PATH:;make clean’[/shell]

Codelite supports debugging through gdb; embedded and remote targets also supported. Since I am using a emulator to test my kernel, I have to use remote debugging in GDB to test my OS. Codelite integrates well with GDB remote debugging. I use the following GDB commands as startup gdb commands.
[shell]
set print pretty on
directory src/kernel

symbol obj/kernel.sys
source img/gdb/general.gdb

source img/gdb/stack.gdb
source img/gdb/vm.gdb
[/shell]

If SVN is configured, using codelite you can see difference between two versions of a same file.
By default codelite uses the default diff viewer. 
It can be changed from Plugins menu -> Subversion->Options and setting the value appropriately. 
I use WinMerge to see difference of source files and have the following settings:
External Diff viewer: C:\Program Files\WinMerge\WinMergeU.exe
Arguments : /dl %bname /dr %mname %base %mine 

Another good thing about CodeLite is it is under development and your bug report/feature requests are solved within short time frame.

You can download CodeLite from www.codelite.org. It has installer for Windows and Linux also.

I have been using Noetpad++ for more than 2 years. It is a wonderful editor – it is very light and feature rich. I use it for editing any text files (txt, ini, C, C++, html, css..). I was happy with Notepad++ for editing my C project source files. Only thing I didn’t like was, to compile I have to go to command prompt and then to correct errors I have to note down the line numbers and open notepad++ modify….

Yesterday, I started searching for a new notepad replacement cum IDE for my Ace(C on cygwin) project. Dev-Cpp and PSPad were IDEs I got. I downloaded and installed both of them. Here comes the problem, both are heavier than notepad++. I might have not explored well, both don’t have option to run cygwin make and capture output and process it.

So I decided to create a notepad++ plugin for my need. But before that wanted to try existing plug-ins and found NppExec. This plug-in allows to run command inside notepad++ and captures the output. It also opens a C file and goto line numbers if it was in the error output if you double click on a line containing “error:” or “warning:” string (I found this one accidently). Downloaded NppExec and ran “make” inside it; but got what I really expected. The output of cygwin “make” has relative path.

i386/io.c:19: error: `Port’ undeclared (first use in this function)
make[1]: *** [i386/io.o] Error 1
make: *** [kernel] Error 2

Since my project make works by invoking “make” inside each directory, relative path will be little complicated – so decided to use absolute path in the output of gcc warning and errors. So modified the explicit rule like following.

$(CC) -c $(abspath $I./include $(CFLAGS)

Out of topic – good make file http://make.paulandlesley.org/autodep.html

Now the output is like the following

/cygdrive/e/sam/Ace3/src/kernel/i386/io.c:19: error: `Port’ undeclared (first use in this function) make[1]: *** [i386/io.o] Error 1 make: *** [kernel] Error 2

This output was not enough because, if I double click this line, notepad tries to open c:/ /cygdrive/e/sam/Ace3/src/kernel/i386/io.c instead of e:/sam/Ace3/src/kernel/i386/io.c.

To solve this problem the I used the following script in notepad++ run command(hotkey – F6)

c:\cygwin\bin\bash -l -c ‘cd src;make 2> err; sed -e “s@\(\/cygdrive\/\)\([a-zA-Z]\)@\2:@g” err; rm err’

Sed help: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-sed2.html

Explanation of this command:

c:\cygwin\bin\bash -l –c

Tells NppExec to execute bash and capture its ouput. –l means login and execute bash scripts and profile – I need this for setup my make environment. –c means execute the commands given as argument and exit. Each command is separated by semi-colon.

cd src; – needs no explanation – not needed may be in your case.

make 2> err; – run make and redirect errors to “err” file.

sed -e “s@\(\/cygdrive\/\)\([a-zA-Z]\)@\2:@g” err; – find the pattern /cygdrive/? And replace it with /cygdrive/?:

rm err – remove the error file.

If double clicking on the error/warning message is not opening the file, then try configuring NppExec’s console output filter by using the following %ABSFILE%:%LINE%: warning:* and %ABSFILE%:%LINE%: error:*