OSDev.org

Solar wrote:I'd hate to see this thread degrade into another pro/con Win/Linux debate.

Aw, you're no fun. ;D

The real answer is, everyone should try all the options, and choose the one that suits them best. It would be foolish to assume there is any one option that would suit everyone the best. The best OS is the one you like working with the most, whatever that may be...

Contrast this with programming languages, where we all know C is the one true way.

As far as editors go, I'm partial to Emacs (best smart-indenting ever -- most customizable too), but some computers I use just don't have the horsepower for it. I've become a fan of a little editor called "jed" for use in those situations, but on computers that can handle is, Emacs is definately my favorite operating system...

(Not to throw gas on the fire, but...)

Dreamsmith wrote:The real answer is, everyone should try all the options, and choose the one that suits them best. It would be foolish to assume there is any one option that would suit everyone the best. The best OS is the one you like working with the most, whatever that may be...

Exactly. One can't know which OS one likes to work on the most until one has tried several. So perhaps (sometimes) suspending political correctness to the extent that we can get people to at least try out new things isn't so bad ;D

As ever-accelerating change is the only constant in the modern world, being "comfortable" with something means being dependent on it.

For myself, I try to minimize this dependence upon any particular platform by making sure the apps I use are multi-platform (as an example, Opera instead of Konqueror, and Thunderbird instead of KMail), so that I can switch between operating systems at will. I currently use Linux for the usual (practical) benefits it offers over Windows (although I have some Windows computers, too), but would switch to OS X instantly if someone offered me a brand-new PowerBook ::)

Unlike you, I have more "standard" editors, and more "standard" operating systems that I use.
Most of the time (atm):
Slackware Linux 8.1, why, loads pretty fast.
Editor: Jed (sometimes) and mcedit (simple.)

Windows 98:
Editor: notepad (my favourite one on Windows ;D )

Dreamsmith wrote:

Solar wrote:I'd hate to see this thread degrade into another pro/con Win/Linux debate.

Aw, you're no fun. ;D

The real answer is, everyone should try all the options, and choose the one that suits them best. It would be foolish to assume there is any one option that would suit everyone the best. The best OS is the one you like working with the most, whatever that may be...

Contrast this with programming languages, where we all know C is the one true way.

As far as editors go, I'm partial to Emacs (best smart-indenting ever -- most customizable too), but some computers I use just don't have the horsepower for it. I've become a fan of a little editor called "jed" for use in those situations, but on computers that can handle is, Emacs is definately my favorite operating system...

I totally agree, I use what I find most comfortable as the os I use is a tool.

srg

i should add i do all my code editing under SCITE.
scite rocks. code folding. syntax highlighting. tabed windows. blah blah. cross platform (win32 works fast like a charm). gtk unix version. blah blah.

i did find the other day and test it (oh how i miss it). TSE PRO, now has a windows version (remember qedit??). damn it was nice to be back in such a familiar editor. it rocked.... but i am not paying 99$usd for it.

scite is free. i will stick to scite.

I use windows 2k, visual c++ 6.0 ide becuase Im very used to it, bochs...

Colonel Kernel wrote: A lot of people seem to be using Cygwin. I have very little experience with it, and what I do have was from a few years ago (in the context of work, not OS dev). What I remember about it was that it was a bit too invasive of the normal workings of the NT/2k command-prompt...

Basically, Cygwin gives you a bash prompt as under *nixes. You won't feel much difference between a Cygwin bash and a *BSD/Linux/whatever bash - which might be a good or a bad thing depending on your views and experience with such surroundings.

You can use the Cygwin executables from outside the bash, too - for example, I used Cygwin's ctags in combination with UltraEdit to get a function list and cross-references for my source files.

Installing / updating Cygwin is a matter of running the setup.exe from their website, which installs everything in one directory of your choice. No registry tampering, no DLL hell. Uninstalling is done by deleting that directory.

It might be a lot easier for me to have the GNU toolchain running outside of my VM, and just use the VM for testing.

Huh? I didn't get that one.

Also, everyone seems to have their own pet editors.

Hardly surprising, is it? Three basic camps (console based, GUI based, full IDE), with a couple of flavours (free or payed-for, vi or emacs, ...) added for spice...

I don't want to start a "which editor is best" debate, but I am wondering -- for those who've used VC++.NET (or even VC6, which is pretty close), is there a free editor that comes close to behaving in the same manner?

Well, it all depends. What is "in the same manner"? Project file handling? Building from within the editor? InteliSense? Auto-indenting? GUI builder? (ha, ha)

What would be a show-stopper, and what a minor nuisance?

See, some people wouldn't really see a difference between jEdit, SciTE and UltraEdit. For others, jEdit is too slow, SciTE too limited in its project handling, and UltraEdit being evil payware.

Tastes differ.

Solar wrote:

It might be a lot easier for me to have the GNU toolchain running outside of my VM, and just use the VM for testing.

Huh? I didn't get that one.

Right now I'm doing all my compiling and testing in my VM which is running Mandrake 9.2. The VM is running Samba, so I can edit the files from XP and save them to the virtual network share. The problem is that in order to test, I have to reboot the VM, which takes quite a long time. If I can build everything in XP and just dump the kernel image onto a virtual floppy, then I can power up the VM to test, which takes far less time than a full reboot.

Also, everyone seems to have their own pet editors.

Hardly surprising, is it? Three basic camps (console based, GUI based, full IDE), with a couple of flavours (free or payed-for, vi or emacs, ...) added for spice...

I'm looking for a free GUI-based editor without all the IDE features... something as lightweight as possible, but with features like smart indenting and syntax highlighting.

I don't want to start a "which editor is best" debate, but I am wondering -- for those who've used VC++.NET (or even VC6, which is pretty close), is there a free editor that comes close to behaving in the same manner?

Well, it all depends. What is "in the same manner"? Project file handling? Building from within the editor? InteliSense? Auto-indenting? GUI builder? (ha, ha)

What would be a show-stopper, and what a minor nuisance?

I mean the keystrokes should do roughly the same thing. Ctrl-left and ctrl-right should move from word to word, for example. Tab should insert tabs instead of spaces (or at least make it configurable, which in Syn it's not). Intellisense would be neat, but I don't expect miracles... Auto-indenting and brace matching is a must.

See, some people wouldn't really see a difference between jEdit, SciTE and UltraEdit. For others, jEdit is too slow, SciTE too limited in its project handling, and UltraEdit being evil payware.

Tastes differ.

Thanks... I'll look into some of these.

Colonel Kernel wrote:Right now I'm doing all my compiling and testing in my VM which is running Mandrake 9.2. The VM is running Samba, so I can edit the files from XP and save them to the virtual network share. The problem is that in order to test, I have to reboot the VM, which takes quite a long time. If I can build everything in XP and just dump the kernel image onto a virtual floppy, then I can power up the VM to test, which takes far less time than a full reboot.

Or you could test by simply firing up a second VM.

Colonel Kernel wrote: I'm looking for a free GUI-based editor without all the IDE features... something as lightweight as possible, but with features like smart indenting and syntax highlighting.

I prefer Context for all of my editing in Windows... I am also looking for something very similar for linux. The best i have found is Kate, and that gives me too many annoying messages and doesn't remember my settings (and its kinda heavy). so if anyone knows of something like context for linux, let me know!

Just tried Context, and it works pretty well for what I need. I also tried SCITE, but the mental/temporal overhead of wading through config files seemed to outweigh any benefits of using it (at least when compared to Context). Thanks for the suggestions all.

I have another tools question that I thought I should put here rather than hijack someone else's thread. I notice a few people recommending building a GCC cross-compiler if you're using Cygwin. I'm just wondering... what's the purpose for doing this? I'm used to the "cross" in cross-compiler meaning either instruction set (irrelevant, since *nix or Windows on any given box is still x86) or OS (should also be irrelevant, since we're rolling our own here). Is the reason that the version of GCC included with Cygwin doesn't support ELF? For those of us whose kernel images are not ELF (e.g. -- flat binary file), do we need to care about cross-compiling...?

Colonel Kernel wrote: Is the reason that the version of GCC included with Cygwin doesn't support ELF? For those of us whose kernel images are not ELF (e.g. -- flat binary file), do we need to care about cross-compiling...?

Yes, the one supplied compiles to PE format.

This creates a problem trying to link things together to a flat binary with LD.

Building a cross-compiler is very simple (The Wiki has good instructions) and only takes ten minutes or so (Depending on processor speed), so it's not a huge hassle.

You mean it isn't possible for LD to go from PE -> binary, even though it can go from ELF -> binary? What's the limitation of PE (or is it just a limitation of LD)?

Curufir wrote:

Colonel Kernel wrote: Is the reason that the version of GCC included with Cygwin doesn't support ELF? For those of us whose kernel images are not ELF (e.g. -- flat binary file), do we need to care about cross-compiling...?

Yes, the one supplied compiles to PE format.

This creates a problem trying to link things together to a flat binary with LD.

Building a cross-compiler is very simple (The Wiki has good instructions) and only takes ten minutes or so (Depending on processor speed), so it's not a huge hassle.

I had a year of trying to make, unsuccessfully, a GCC cross compiler in Cygwin untill the entry was written in the Wikki, after a typo it was corrected I finally got a successful cross compiler, fantastic work guys!

srg

OS and programming environment:

I do my programming on Windows XP. I use NoteTab Pro for editing my source code, NASM to assemble it, and RawWriteWin to "burn" the image onto floppy. If I want to run multiple programs in one go, I write a BAT file. If I want to check out the contents of a binary file, I use XVI32, a freeware hex editor.

I don't write much C, except for the occasional utility for creating binary files of one kind or another -- in which case I use LCC to compile, and WEdit to edit the source code.

I don't use Bochs, because many months ago I went on eBay and bought a cheap (~$100) used obsolete laptop (Pentium MMX, ~200MHz, 32MB RAM, ~3GB hard disk, external floppy drive) for test-running my software.

To upload my stuff to my website, I use Directory Opus, a Swiss-Army-knife-like file manager with built-in FTP functions. (OK, you don't care about that... )

On Windows vs. Linux: There are probably setups that are arguably "better" than mine, but I'm happy with what I've got and would hate to have to relearn my habits.