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What are your recommendations for setting up a development environment in Windows, especially when not using an IDE. I am attempting to familiarize myself with Windows, and I feel a bit lost. What do developers commonly work on, especially when developing in multiple languages (e.g. Java, Python, C) in the same time.
So far, I have been a hardline using Mac+Linux environments where I love my command line a lot. I pretty much run all my compilations, testing, code repository commands in the terminal and have multiple terminals all the time. Terminal features (e.g. integrated bash completion, easy copy&paste, easy to setup environment variables) and package management tools (e.g. apt-get, port, fink) are quite handy. I dislike hunting down different websites to install their latest binary build.
Coming back to my question. My question is two fold:
What's commonly used? Do developers on Windows commonly use command line, or just be satisfied with an IDE?
For comers from Linux/Mac world: what do you recommend to get up to speed?
NOTE: I realize that a lot of Windows developers haven't used Linux, so they may not know what I'm talking about when it comes to Linux environment.
It's almost unheard of to not use an IDE for Windows development.
I started programming in the early 80's so grew up on the command line, but nothing beats a modern IDE for productivity.
By far the most common choice is Visual Studio, though I have also used #develop (open source) and find it a fine platform to get up to speed with.
I have used Eclipse extensively (on Linux and Windows) and find Visual Studio to be easier to use. I especially miss options for debugging under windows such as moving the instruction pointer around during debug and change-and-continue (change the code, within limits, while debugging, move the instruction pointer back if necessary, and keep debugging).
If you have used Eclipse, Visual Studio or #develop will not be that hard to get used to.
I tend to install cygwin, which is a unix emulation layer and includes many of the standard unix utilities (grep, awk, sed, etc). You can use bash or any other unix shell with cygwin to basically give yourself a unix environment on windows.
There are some downsides, paths are a good example. Windows programs expect windows paths while the unix tools expect unix paths. You can convert between the two using the cygpath program, but sometimes its tricky to know when to use it.
Another thing I do fairly often is create a bunch of batch files that load different programs onto my path. This allows me to have different version of say java installed and I can pick the version I want to use for any given shell session. I link a bunch of these together so that I have a full environment for the program I'm working on. For example, if I require java 1.5, maven, subversion then I would have a batch file to load each into the environment, then have a master file that loads all of them for a standard environment.
This approach gives a lot of flexibility and is really easy to maintain and work with different environment simultaneously.
Most windows developers that develop on the microsoft stack of products probably use Visual Studio. For windows development without Visual Studio, SharpDevelop is the current most popular alternative.
However if you are looking for a user experience more similar to linux you can always use windows command prompt and all of the command prompt compilers still exist. Just like with linux you'll have to modify your environmental variables to make everything work you you'd like it to.
If that still isn't close enough to the feel on linux, you can try out Cygwin.
Many of your common utilities from linux like gdb do have windows builds as well.
And of course there is the Eclipse IDE that is used for many languages, by many people, on multiple platforms. It is very extendable.
Some other tools you may be missing:
GCC - Available Via Cygwin
MS Build can give you similar functionality to what you had with make (I'm not sure if nmake is still used/supported)
Vi/Vim
Grep
SysInternals will have lots of various file/process monitoring utilities to hopefully adequately replace what you miss being able to simply get from /proc
Wireshark(or ethereal) to replace well... wireshark/ethereal/
Tail is available in the Windows Resource Kit
Emacs
Hopefully that covers most of your basic tasks.
Microsoft now has a real shell for Windows: Windows PowerShell.
In addition to Cygwin, there are ports for a lot of the GNU utilities and toolchain to Windows. GnuWin32 seems to be a more up-to-date version than UnixUtils. MSYS is essentially a port of BASH to Windows, but it's fairly useless without the MinGW userland.
C++ / .NET Development: Visual Studio 2008
Java / PHP Development: Eclipse IDE, which also supports C/C++.
For a non-IDE solution, Notepad++ is a very good code highlighter that supports many languages.
Simply install cygwin. The quality has improved dramatically in recent years. I'm currently running cygwin x64 on Vista, and it's great.
One thing to especially take note of in cygwin is your path. Most troubleshooting with scripts and installed software should begin there.
The other tip I'd give is to use the rxvt terminal over the standard issue cygwin terminal. It might be installed by default nowadays, but check to make sure.
Visual Studio for .net/C++ (even the express editions are useful)
The sysinternals tools rock, especially Procmon and process explorer.
If you do native/C++ work knowing windbg can be helpful
Notepad++ and gvim are my preferred editors
For doing command line/shell stuff I often use python to write short scripts (for anything but the simplest batch file)
If you are familiar with .net then learning powershell isn't much of a stretch and there is a ton of functionality available
Related
Similar to this question What programming languages are installed by default on Windows 7?. Is the environment any differnt for Windows 10?
For some programs like MS OFfice you get the VBA, Chrome you would get Javascript, if you activate the Bash for Ubuntu on Windows then you can get bash. Not sure if that is default.
In particular, if you didn't have administration rights over a Windows 10 laptop but needed a programming language... what could you use or do about it?
ie I wanted Ruby installed but I needed our tech team to help me. I want to avoid someone else with higher access but also not breach policy.
Out of the box no install solutions include:
(To be written using text file editing software like the preinstalled notepad)
Batch (.bat)
Visual basic script (.vbs)
HTML (.html)
CSS (^Use a style tag for the HTML doc)
JavaScript (.js)
Some quick gets include:
Bash (Ubuntu from Windows Store)
AutoHotKey (from autohotkey.com)
#Code (Windows Store. Apparently supports 12 different languages)
Hope this helps!
Edit: If you really wanna try, you can edit .exe files directly but yeesh.
Edit 2: repl.it is a website that lets you code in tons of different languages, possibly Ruby. With repl.it you can do all the things I've listed and more! (As long as you have alright internet.)
what could you use
You could use pretty much any languages. Any compiled executables looks the same to the OS as any other.
The only catch is that some languages' runtime libraries are quite big, so it's common for smaller programs not to include the entire language runtime and instead expects it to be preinstalled on the machine to keep its own download size small.
However, even high level scripting languages that requires huge runtime support libraries can often be packaged into standalone executable, so that you don't need to install the runtime yourself.
Ultimately it depends on what you wanted to do. If you wanted to just make simple scripts, probably .bat scripts will do just fine. If you wanted something simple and fast, then you can write native executable in C, otherwise if you want to do something a bit more complex and you're fine with the larger download size if you can keep your own program simple, or if you can later get admin to preinstall your preferred runtime on your target machines, then high level languages like Python or Ruby would be great options.
I was wondering is there a free Windows version of GCC.
I know there is minigw and something else but I don't know how to use them.
Sorry if this should be on SU.
The main choices are either MinGW or CygWin.
CygWin is a more complete UNIX-like environment than MinGW as it offers quite a lot of tools over and above development stuff. Even to the point of a full X-Windows server so you can develop software that'll run on both UNIX-like systems and Windows.
The installer is good but I would suggest installing everything even if you think you don't need it. Disk space is cheap and I've had problems in the past trying to get stuff going on partial installs (whether 1.7, or even earlier, fixes this, I don't know - I always do full installs).
However, it relies on the CygWin UNIX emulation DLL which, if I remember rightly, has restrictions for non-free software.
MinGW is more concentrated on the development tools. It generates native Windows applications rather than running under a emulation DLL like CygWin.
It used to be difficult to install with having to do MinGW, MSYS and others separately but it's come a long since then and has an easy graphical installer.
I believe it can do graphical applications using native Windows calls rather than via X-Windows, since it just links to the normal Windows runtimes.
If you want to know how to use either of them, you really have to look through the docs found at those links I provided - check the Documentation link on the left for MinGW (particularly Getting started) or the CygWin FAQ.
As for GUIs for development, I've never used one for CygWin - I'm old enough that I remember mark sense cards so I'm not scared of the command line interface :-).
I used Eclipse with CDT running over MinGW and wasn't that impressed although admittedly that was an early version. Don't get me wrong Eclipse is a brilliant tool and we use it for both Java and Linux/C development, I just had a lot of troubles with Eclipse/CDT under Windows.
Code::Blocks, on the other hand, was absolutely brilliant but you should check them all out to see which one suits you best. As I said, the last time I looked was about five years ago, an eternity in the IT world.
I am a bit late, but since the question may still arise...
gcc for Windows (including Ada, C, C++ and Fortran compilers) can be obtained from MinGW-builds on SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingwbuilds/files/host-windows/releases/
As of august 2013, there are 32 and 64 bits versions of gcc-4.8.1.
I'm certain this has been asked before, with with nearly 900k questions, it's hard to find things :)
We are starting a project where we want our C++ and Python to run both under a Unix environment but also under Windows. We want to make our project easy to contribute to as developers, and so we wish to have what each side feels is "natural."
In this case, under Unix, it's automake/autoconf/etc. Under Windows, anything but visual studio project files seems like a mistake. This is mostly because we want windows-native hackers to have a way to easily develop in their natural environment.
How are people doing this sort of thing today? Are Windows coders comfortable in a non-GUI world, so we are trying too hard?
Another goal is that we need automated testing of our project, ideally using the same test code (google-test) on all platforms, etc. This may be matter for another question, though.
Multi-platform development can be a tricky situation. Here are some things we do to ease the process:
Source Control (this one is obvious, a solid code-base that works with both Windows and Linux, we use SubVersion)
Create standards (All of our Makefiles look identical and are easy to implement as are our .sln files for Visual Studio)
Build the application on all platforms, frequently
Be aware of cross library use like QT and any quirks that might contain between Windows and Linux
Sometimes you can't avoid it: #ifndef's to execute some code specific to a platform
We develop in Windows, Sun and Linux (RedHat) with multiple applications both visual and command line based. I hope that helps!
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Linux utilities like sed, awk and other shell scripting features are awesome and life becomes a lot harder when I am developing on windows and cant use any of these.
People suggest to use cygwin for those who want the linux like tools under windows. But I feel cygwin will be an overkill for someone who only wants to use the handful commands.
Some say that Windows Services for Unix can also be a good alternative.
I have used none of these. Can some experienced programmer suggest best/simplest way to do this? of course apart from switching to linux itself.
I think the GnuWin32 project is exactly what you're looking for. Unix command line tools ported to Windows.
I've been using UnxUtils which are ports of common GNU utilities to native Win32 for ages.
I should add that I've also used Cygwin (et al.) and Microsoft's Services for Unix and neither of them were any good for me because they don't work as well as native versions from the command prompt, and using ksh/bash/whatever under Windows never really works right, even though I use ksh under unix all the time.
I tried something like this quite often, but to be honest, none of it really works well.
I therefore suggest using a virtual machine (such as VirtualBox) and install a small linux inside that. You can easily move files from and to the guest system with shared folders.
Judging by my experience, it is the best solution I used so far.
I tried Gow for some time, and it's nice. It offers 130 Unix-shell utilities for Windows. The contextual menu in the File explorer, to start a prompt in the current folder, is really handy.
There's a GNU port of many of the utils. I find that quite useful.
If you need Perl, I recommend Strawberry Perl.
The problem with most of the tools suggested here is that they don't get updated very often E.g. the last update GnuWin32 got was on 27 December 2010; UnxUtils was last updated on 01 March 2007.
I suggest MSYS2, a very good option which has a Win32 port of Arch's pacman package management system built-in. It's a spin-off from Cygwin like MSYS but much better than MSYS (lots of packages and gets updated almost daily) and (very light as opposed to) Cygwin.
It's a rolling release distribution that works under Windows and thus you get the latest and greatest of the packages. MSYS2 additionally has MinGW, provided in both x86 and x86_64 flavours. They've their own list of packages - MinGW packages.
Maintainers are very affable too.
MSYS is a common alternative for people who find CygWin excessive. It's still a special prompt, but it was originally intended to set up just enough Unix-compatibility to build programs using the MinGW compilers and the typical configure/make routine.
Using tools like sed and awk isn't going to work quite as expected in a normal Windows command prompt. It can be done to a point, but common usage involves command-line syntax that is normally interpreted by the shell, but which the Windows command prompt doesn't support. One example is wildcard file specifications. I've often found that Unix-centric tools aren't as usable on Windows as they assume the shell has expanded those wildcards into lists of files for them.
Install msysGit (netinstaller), it comes with a (msys/minGW) shell environment.
It also adds a "open shell here" in explorer.
It's faster than Cygwin, but at the sacrifice of unix compatibility.
Maybe it is stupid, but I usually search google for i.e.: "indent windows". You can select tools from mixed platforms. Lot of stuff from open systems has been ported on windows.
I am currently constrained to a windows dev box and I want to migrate my projects from eclipse to emacs.
What are some good references on setting up an emacs dev environment for windows? Anything that could assist in migrating from eclipse as well would be appreciated.
If you're used to windows behaviors (e.g. ctrl-c is copy, etc.), a good (customized) version of emacs for windows is the 'EmacsW32' package.
If you're looking at migrating away from eclipse, I assume that you probably want java support. For this you will want to get the JDEE package, also. Unfortunately, it's non-trivial to deploy on windows, as it depends on other packages (and requires cygwin or msys (pseudo-unix environments for windows) in order to install).
You may also want to install additional modes to support e.g. SCM systems, etc. A good source of information for this is the EmacsWiki. There's a significant amount of material there about emacs on windows, although some of it is out of date....
Sure, just download a prebuilt version and use it.
For example, as I use R a lot with the wonderful Emacs ESS mode, the prebuilt version by Vincent Goulet is really useful as it contains Emacs, ESS, Auctex (for LaTeX) and more.
Other prebuilds exist for Cygwin, MinGW, or plain old Windows.
Eclipse is pretty good on Windows; I'm a big user of emacs but for Java development I spend most of my time in Eclipse.
Regarding general use of emacs on windows I highly recommend you install GnuWin32, as it is much faster than Cygwin and integrates very well. Also see my blog post on Visual Studio tricks in emacs and this one on tags.
I'll assume you are doing Java development for the most part and that you would prefer not to be using Windows. This is a situation I find myself in from time to time. My preferences are to use a Linux machine (virutal or real) in addition to the Windows machine. Emacs just works better in a real Unix environment. And then use both Emacs and Eclipse where each is stronger. Emacs for editing, mail, planning, "thinking" type stuff and Eclipse for debugging, refactoring, some error fixing. Fortunately both Emacs and Eclipse make it easy to use both simultaneously.
I generally use EmacsW32 on a new box - it's a good option at least initially. I'd also recommend checking out the emacs starter kits which hook up to ELPA (http://tromey.com/elpa/), which allows you to get a usable setup pretty quickly.
Install Cygwin.
In your .emacs, load these two files, in this order:
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/download/cygwin-mount.el
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/download/setup-cygwin.el