As I reported earlier, I have to change the name of "CDT for Windows" to something else. While doing so, I want to try address a big sector that I think we've kept trying but kept missing, and that's the C/C++ desktop application developer.
So here it is, the Wascana Desktop Developer, or simply Wascana. What's a Wascana? Well, since I was in Regina and I had some people comment on my last blog entry to name it after Regina, I did. Wascana is the Cree word for "Pile O' Bones", and was the original name for Regina. The beautiful park and lake in the center of Regina is called Wascana Park. They just finished a cool redevelopment project of the lake, which was an impressive engineering achievement on a tight budget. And this distribution really is a pile of bones, a collection of open source components that we're bringing together to make a skeleton that desktop application developers can dress up. Or something like that :).
I originally planned on addressing the needs of the Windows developer, but, given the strenghts of CDT at cross platform development, I'd like to expand this to cover all desktop operating systems, including Linux and Mac OS X. And I'd like to provide a set of open source cross-platform libraries that support a variety of desktop applications. The wxWidgets library is a natural. I'd also like to support the hobbyist game developer, one of probably the most interesting area of desktop development. Something like Ogre and SDL would fit that bill.
I am also making my Microsoft C++ compiler and Windows debugger support a part of this project to try and get more interest (i.e. help) with it. I've been disappointed in the progress of MinGW, e.g., there's still no gcc 4 port. And gdb is still gdb and has a lot of issues on Windows. So I think MSVC support needs to be there to for Wascana to make any serious inroads on Windows.
Linux will be interesting. Ideally, we'd like to leverage the tools and libraries as they come with the distributions. We'll need to make sure we get the right versions lined up, maybe with some super packages or something. We'll have to see.
And as for Mac, well I'll need help with that but I know there are a lot of Mac developers using the CDT.
BTW, I've renamed the CDT for Windows project at SourceForge and unfortunately, the didn't forward the old name to the new name so I apologize for the confusion and hope you can find us at http://wascana.sourceforge.net.
Oh my... "Wascana"? What an awful name for an application (though only slightly more repulsive than "Regina"). Your association of a C/C++ tool to an obscure lake in Saskatchewan is tenuous in the extreme.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what the word "Desktop" is doing in there either. Last time I checked, C/C++ was quite useful for development of non-graphical applications -- even on Win32 -- and you're not shipping a form designer with your plugin anyhow.
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ReplyDeleteCongratulations, I think it is a great name. Certainly as good as Aptana or any of the other names people make up.
ReplyDeleteGood luck, I suspect this will be a popular project.
The name sounds fine. Just try to get as many links and references to CDT in there as you can so that others can find it when they search.
ReplyDeleteHow about adding one of the unit testing libraries such as cppunit or cppunitlite?
http://www.objectmentor.com/resources/downloads.html
I'm not a great marketing guy so Wascana was the best I could do. And, yeah, it's no worse than Anjuta either (what's an Anjuta? how do you spell it, I've been calling it anjunta).
ReplyDeleteAnd, yes, C/C++ can be used for anything, the focus on this project will be on Desktop applications, as opposed to Embedded applications which gets a lot of attention already from the CDT community. You can still build headless apps with it if you so wish, just like you can with Visual Studio.
And finally, yes, I do need to put Eclipse and CDT all over the web page. The visibility of this as a CDT-based project is what I'll miss most with the old name.
Will it be possible to set this up onto a usb drive? It would be useful for students in a lab environment where it may not possible for them to install it onto a computer with out admin help.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking about using it for a class that I'm may be teaching. It would be great if I could just tell students to download and install onto the usb drive.
Subclipse or some other subversion software would be excellent as well, but I'm not going to ask for the whole world at all once.
By the way, thank you for the effort that your putting into it. I think that this will make life esaier for a lot of people.
The USB drive thing is an interesting idea. The CDT may still have issues with workspaces moving around like when the USB drive is a different letter on different machines.
ReplyDeletehmm, why not Qt instead of wxWidgets ? Qt is by far the most elaborate cross-platform toolkit for C++ (including GUI and non-GUI applications) and available with an open-source license. Also, since it's for the CDT (iow C++), wxWidgets being multi-language isn't really relevant.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I can't wait for the Visual Studio toolchain and debugger support in the CDT :-) That'd finally allow me to completely drop VS, which I still have to open up when I need to debug something...
Many thanks and keep up the good work !
nb: Trolltech has beta versions of a package for Qt integration with Eclipse/CDT which rocks, you guys should have a a look one day.
nb2: are there details available somewhere on why the VS debugger support didn't make it in the CDT 4.0 ?
The open source version of QT is GPL. That means any programs you write with it must be GPL. I'm trying to give freedom to developers to license their work as they see fit. If you want Qt, you can get it from Trolltech.
ReplyDeletere: nb2: Windows debugger support didn't make 4.0 since I needed to do other things and no one else is working on it.
Wascana is a fine name. I hadn't heard of this wxWidgets before. It looks pretty cool!
ReplyDeleteDoug, I would like to make a suggestion...
ReplyDeleteI think that integrating your system with cmake (http://www.cmake.org) as a build tool would make the cross platform aspects much smoother.
cmake is a cross-platform, open-source make system which can build linux and windows apps from windows and the reverse etc.
I am currently building C++ code manually using the CDT and cmake, on linux, with my outputs being windows, mac and linux, butt he integration is not smooth.
If you are interested in really making this distribution cross platform, so that it runs on multiple OSes and also generates output for multiple apps, I would be interested in getting involved.
Cheers,
- Ding
Thanks a lot for this IDE. Makes my life so much easier :)
ReplyDeleteAnd BTW, if anybody is interested, I have systemC 2.2 running with Wascana (or even standard Eclipse) with Cygwin toolchain OR systemC 2.1 running with Wascana (or standard Eclipse) with MInGW toolchain.
Hi Doug,
ReplyDeleteWhen you you plan to release the next version of Wascana, I mean the one that supports the Visual Studio toolchain?
I've been working on the installer for Wascana 1.0 over the last few days. I'm trying to make it look like work by using p2 so I can allow myself time on it. It's looking like it'll be until sometime in October before I can get it out. Stay tuned.
ReplyDeleteOkay ...
ReplyDeleteIs there some sort of news letter/alert that an interested person such as myself can sign up to. I'm that eager to try it out. (Visual studio + Visual assist isn't really doing it for me.)
I will announce the release to the Open Discussion forum on the Wascana site, and to my blog, of course...
ReplyDeleteWascana rulez! it saved plenty of time for me! and even helped me with choosing development tools. but I spend 1.5 days before made wxWidgets HelloWorld app work. I think that would be cool if there was a separate project type - "wxWidgets C++ project" or something.
ReplyDeleteHi Dough!
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to give you my congratulation for this project that helped me out to compile and run my "complex" program. It was created with MSVC 6.0 and I moved to Eclipse because of its functionalities (refactoring, word completion with template proposals, keyboard shorcuts, etc., etc,) Until now I was trying to compilate but I always got a lot o errors. After installing Wascana (and discovering that I had to add some system libraries WITHOUT EXTENSION in Tool Settings/Libraries ) I was able to compile it and build it successfully. I am very happy and would like to thank you for this. I had to search in several forums for a solution but they told it was impossible to use a MSCV toolchain in eclipse. Well thanks to you that is not true.
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ReplyDeleteAndroid app developers