KDevelop

KDevelop is a free C and C++ IDE for GNU/Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. KDevelop 3.0 was a complete rewrite of KDevelop 2. It was released together with KDE 3.2 in February 2004. KDevelop is licensed under the GPL license.

KDevelop does not include a compiler; instead, it uses the GNU Compiler Collection and/or other compilers to produce executable code.

The current version, 3.2, supports many more programming languages such as Ada, Bash, Fortran, Java, Pascal, Perl, Python, Ruby, and SQL, in addition to C and C++.

Basic Features

KDevelop uses an embedded text editor component through KPart technology. The default editor is KDE Advanced Text Editor. This list focuses on the features of KDevelop itself. For features specific to the editor component, see the article on Kate.

• Source code editor with syntax highlighting and automatic indentation (Kate).
• Project management for different project types, such as Automake, qmake for Qt based projects and Ant for Java based projects.
• Class browser.
• Front-end for the GNU Compiler Collection.
• Front-end for the GNU Debugger.
• Wizards for generating and updating class definitions and application framework.
• Automatic code completion (C/C++).
• Built-in Doxygen support.
• CVS support.

Detailed Features Description

KDevelop 3 is completely plugin based architecture and code. When a developer makes a change he only has to compile the plugin. KDevelop is the only IDE which does not come with a text editor because it uses a plugin. It is programming language and build system independent. Supports KDE and Gnome and many others such as Qt, GTK+, wxWidgets.

KDevelop has a big list of supported languages. Supported build systems are GNU (automake), qmake, make for custom projects (KDevelop does not destroy your own Makefiles if that's what you want to use) and scripting projects which don't need one.

Code completion is available for C and C++. Symbols are kept in a Berkeley DB file for quick lookups without re-parsing. Integrated debugger lets you graphically do all the debugging with breakpoints and backtraces. It even works with dynamically loaded plugins unlike command line gdb.

Quick Open allows quick navigation between files.

50 to 100 plugins exist, too many to mention here. Major ones include persistent project wide code bookmarks, Code abbreviations which let you quickly expand text, a Source formatter which reformats your code to a style guide before it is saved, Regular expressions search, and project-wide search/replace which helps with refactoring code.

See also

• KDE
• kate

External links

• KDevelop homepage
• KDevelop project on freshmeat
• Freehackers interview with KDevelop team
• KDE programming tutorial using KDevelop
• KDE Wiki – KDevelop Talk