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Dark GDK / Why not support this that and the other C++?

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Troll Fiddler
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Posted: 23rd Jun 2005 21:31 Edited at: 23rd Jun 2005 21:50
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Hi,

Just browsing through the forum posts and noticed that a regular question is "Why don't you support <X> IDE". I admit to being guilty of this myself not too long ago.

A thought occurred to me that rather than ask for IDEs, why not support something like GCC (g++)? Most free IDEs go with the GNU tools, so supporting GNU would solve a lot of problems. As an example I downloaded the Eclipse C++ tools and just pointed them at my Dev-C++ bin directory, and away I went. Some great Eclipse tools available that I'm used to with Java, a familiar IDE, but for C++. No pain at all.

If you could pull something like that for the DGSDK it would be preferable to picking (say) just Dev-C++. As in formal testing, you could kill a whole class of problems rather than an individual one! Just a thought.

<edit>Just occurred to me that maybe I wasn't being clear. What I was suggesting was taking an open source cross-platform IDE, and open source cross-platform C++ toolkit, and integrating the SDK with it. So ONLY for example, integrate with Eclipse as a cross-platform IDE, give people links to download their platform version of the GNU C++ tools (e.g. mingW32), and that's it.</edit>

T.
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Keaz
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Posted: 24th Jun 2005 03:50
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The TGC's DB SDK doesn't fall underthe requirements of the GNU license . As far as I know anway. C++ is professional development companies use and they are try to take a stab at bringing that to their consumers, I think. Ex: EA Games doesn't use GCC.

Breaking Stuff=Fun!,Bug Testing<>Fun!, Bug Testing=Breaking Stuff, so...
Bug Testing=Fun! Hmmmm....
DOES NOT COMPUTE! SYSTEM MALFUNTION!
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OSX Using Happy Dude
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Posted: 24th Jun 2005 06:41
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Besides it's a pain trying to get it working in GCC...


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IanM
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Posted: 24th Jun 2005 08:09
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@TF,

It's not the IDE that's the problem - it's the compiler. The DBPro source code was written for VC++6, not for generic C++. If you are not very careful, it's easy to write code that's specific to the compiler, and that's what seems to have happened in this case.

Specifically, the code was not written to work with GCC, and there's probably a lot of work needed to correct that. Whether it's commercially worthwhile to do so is a question that only TGC can guess at.

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Troll Fiddler
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Posted: 24th Jun 2005 20:42
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Ah right, thanks people. I wondered why it was so tightly tied to VC++. I should have guessed when I saw the word Microsoft. "We let you do it the easy way, only it's our way, and you're stuck with us." Where have I seen that before?
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IanM
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Posted: 24th Jun 2005 21:46
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You've misunderstood slightly - the problem was with the DBPro coders, not the compiler. They have been relying on VC++ non-standard behaviour - it's easy to do.

When I coded the interface library, I compiled in VC++6, VC++.NET and GCC side-by-side for every set of changes I did, and tested all three at the end of the session. It was the only way to be sure that I didn't depend on compiler-specific behaviour.

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Rob K
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Posted: 25th Jun 2005 02:43
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Quote: "The TGC's DB SDK doesn't fall underthe requirements of the GNU license . As far as I know anway. C++ is professional development companies use and they are try to take a stab at bringing that to their consumers, I think. Ex: EA Games doesn't use GCC."


It has nothing to do with the license. You can compile commercial software under GCC.


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Keaz
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Posted: 26th Jun 2005 02:49
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I originally misunderstood what was be asked. I didn't know you can make commercial products with GCC. I thought you had to release your source code (which doesn't make sense for a commercial product). Also the comment that "EA doesn't use GCC" was that this is meant to be a development tool for the power user/C++ user. But the way they went about the project, it is IDE less, but not IDE independant. That is it's a set of libraries designed to work with VisC++, but not specifically GCC or others (although porting may be possible).

Please correct me if I am wrong I don't have much SDK experience.

Breaking Stuff=Fun!,Bug Testing<>Fun!, Bug Testing=Breaking Stuff, so...
Bug Testing=Fun! Hmmmm....
DOES NOT COMPUTE! SYSTEM MALFUNTION!
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Troll Fiddler
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Posted: 26th Jun 2005 04:15
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Quote: "You've misunderstood slightly - the problem was with the DBPro coders, not the compiler. They have been relying on VC++ non-standard behaviour - it's easy to do."


Thanks IanM, that's sort of what I meant, just explained badly I suppose. M$ give you things that make it easier to do stuff, but then you're tied to them. Be nice if they put things through standards bodies before giving them out, but then of course that's just business. They can't wait forever for standards, and I'm sure it suits them just fine to tie people in with non-standard code.
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OSX Using Happy Dude
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Posted: 26th Jun 2005 04:28
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Your not totally tied to Microsoft, especially if you dont use MFC, and keep to standard C. In addition, there are commerical programs that will convert MFC code to code acceptable for other OS's


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IanM
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Posted: 26th Jun 2005 04:30
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Even if you use GCC to compile your code, GCC does not make itself a part of the executable, and so the code you used is not GPL (unless you want it to be of course).

There is nothing wrong with using GCC commercially to produce code that will not be distributed.

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