Description:
Although practically all versions of Linux ship with GCC, a very well-known C compiler with a command-line interface, lots of Linux users are uncomfortable using it. Makefiles, command-line switches, and text-mode debugging are totally foreign to people who have come to Linux from Windows and Mac OS. Freely available command-line Java development tools are similarly troublesome. There's a demand for an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Linux. Such an IDE should provide its users with a graphical interface for writing code, debugging it, storing reusable modules, and doing other software-creation work. CodeWarrior for Linux 6.0 fits that requirement. It's the best commercial IDE for Linux, particularly if you have experience with CodeWarrior under other operating systems, as a lot of the interface conventions carry over. Installing CodeWarrior is simple, and the process isn't encumbered by options. Just run the install script on the single CD-ROM, specify a few directories--the defaults will be fine for most people--and let it go. This product is compatible with pretty much all Linux distributions for x86 and PowerPC, including Red Hat, SuSE, Caldera OpenLinux, Mandrake, and Turbolinux. We installed under Red Hat 7.1 (which is based on the 2.4.2-2 kernel) and had no compatibility problems. This product supports both GNOME and KDE desktops. Once running, CodeWarrior for Linux looks similar to its brothers for other operating systems. When you're developing a program, you're working on a "project," which is defined by a master project file that refers to the files that make up the application. There's a hierarchy editor that eases the management of project contents, and you can choose how the project is compiled (e.g., with or without debugging support). The core of any project, from the perspective of the developer, is its source code files, and CodeWarrior provides a nice code editor--complete with syntax highlighting--of the sort you're used to if you've used IDEs before. Code editors are a matter of personal preference, so take it or leave it. Speaking of code editing, this product includes a clever sort of visual diff--a utility for comparing two files and finding the differences between them. It's surprisingly slick, particularly if the two source files you're comparing are pretty similar (an extra method here, a missing event handler there). Dark-shaded regions highlight what's in the first file and not in the second; light-shaded regions show what's in the second and not in the first: we found it really handy. A few other sharp features are for Java only, like a property editor and an object inspector. Again, this is familiar stuff if you've used CodeWarrior for Java on other platforms, or Microsoft Visual C++ for that matter. Buy CodeWarrior for Linux 6.0 if you prefer to do your software development work in an IDE, either because you're learning programming and don't want to be confused by the GNU programming tools, or because you want to leverage your IDE experience as you move into Linux development. This is a great product. --David Wall
| 
