• Guido (30/30) May 28 2016 I'm planning to ditch C++ and come to D. The problem is that I
• Jussi Jumppanen (11/45) Jun 22 2016 As the author of the Zeus IDE I can say the Zeus support for D is
• Basile B. (29/30) Aug 13 2016 metad is not really useful anymore. It was created at a time
• Basile B. (3/12) Aug 15 2016 oh no the typo...

Guido <guido mailinator.org> writes:

I'm planning to ditch C++ and come to D. The problem is that I 
love IDEs for the types of big projects I do, and the C++ IDEs 
I've used are reasonably good.

The D IDEs that stand out based on their descriptions are Dlang, 
Coedit with metad, Zeus, Code::blocks, and QtCreator with D 
extensions.

Visual Studio with D add-ins also seems to be popular, but I'm 
super down on Visual Studio at the moment because their compiler 
options are error-prone and it's still Microsoft, so I'd like to 
explore something else. I've also given up on getting things done 
with Eclipse. It looks nice, but the times I've tried it, I had 
to ditch it for Netbeans or Visual Studio.

There aren't any real reviews on how these things perform for big 
projects in a professional environment. I'm planning on starting 
my search with QtCreator. However, there are many tools that go 
into debugging, profiling analysis, git integration, etc. that 
seem to require a lot of configuration, and things that just 
don't play well together. Since there are many options, it would 
be great if people could post their recommendations after having 
tried some of these tools. It would save me a lot of time to 
clone a few setups rather than discover the pieces that work well 
together on my own.

I'm looking for things like testimony that your setup worked well 
on a big project, and links to sites where I should install 
stuff, and some idea what value each component brings to setup, 
even if it's not that extensively used. I really can't find this 
sort of detail anywhere, which is why I'm asking here.

In particular, Zeus looks interesting, but from the Zeus website, 
it also looks like a maze of add-on scripts, with no guarantee 
that they work that well. Is anyone using this?

Jussi Jumppanen <jussij zeusedit.com> writes:

On Saturday, 28 May 2016 at 20:23:34 UTC, Guido wrote:
 I'm planning to ditch C++ and come to D. The problem is that I 
 love IDEs for the types of big projects I do, and the C++ IDEs 
 I've used are reasonably good.

 The D IDEs that stand out based on their descriptions are 
 Dlang, Coedit with metad, Zeus, Code::blocks, and QtCreator 
 with D extensions.

 Visual Studio with D add-ins also seems to be popular, but I'm 
 super down on Visual Studio at the moment because their 
 compiler options are error-prone and it's still Microsoft, so 
 I'd like to explore something else. I've also given up on 
 getting things done with Eclipse. It looks nice, but the times 
 I've tried it, I had to ditch it for Netbeans or Visual Studio.

 There aren't any real reviews on how these things perform for 
 big projects in a professional environment. I'm planning on 
 starting my search with QtCreator. However, there are many 
 tools that go into debugging, profiling analysis, git 
 integration, etc. that seem to require a lot of configuration, 
 and things that just don't play well together. Since there are 
 many options, it would be great if people could post their 
 recommendations after having tried some of these tools. It 
 would save me a lot of time to clone a few setups rather than 
 discover the pieces that work well together on my own.

 I'm looking for things like testimony that your setup worked 
 well on a big project, and links to sites where I should 
 install stuff, and some idea what value each component brings 
 to setup, even if it's not that extensively used. I really 
 can't find this sort of detail anywhere, which is why I'm 
 asking here.

 In particular, Zeus looks interesting, but from the Zeus 
 website, it also looks like a maze of add-on scripts, with no 
 guarantee that they work that well. Is anyone using this?

 In particular, Zeus looks interesting, but from the Zeus 
 website, it also looks like a maze of add-on scripts, with no 
 guarantee that they work that well. Is anyone using this?

As the author of the Zeus IDE I can say the Zeus support for D is 
probably a little outdated :(

Some time back, effort was made to see if Zeus could supported 
tools like DCD, DScanner etc and I suspect the scripts you are 
referring to relate to those tools.

But as you have suggested, those scripts are now showing their 
age, just for the fact that Zeus has moved on, no doubt D has 
moved on and more importantly tools like DCD have moved on.

As such I suspect those Zeus scripts are out of date and showing 
their age.

Basile B. <b2.temp gmx.com> writes:

On Saturday, 28 May 2016 at 20:23:34 UTC, Guido wrote:
 Coedit with metad,

metad is not really useful anymore. It was created at a time 
where CE didn't handle DUB projects (2014). I still maintain it 
for my own usage, that's the only reason. It's also been usefull 
3 or 4 times to detect DMD regressions and more recently to test 
a new feature (project groups, batch compilation):

https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/16154339/17611474/e71e9796-6047-11e6-9747-d6380d289a07.png

Anyway, the CE toolchain is quite simple:

- compiler: either DMD/LDC/GDC, called via DUB or via a custom 
format.
- completion: DCD (no srprise here, like 90 % of the D editors).
- code explorer: custom program based on libdparse.
- git integration: possible with the custom tools, e.g on my 
setup i can open git gui on the active project with a single 
click | shortcut
- no support for debuging, though with the custom tools it's 
possible to launch a GDB front-end with the right option (e.g 
`<CPO>` => output filename). More generally the custom tools are 
not a trival feature. Real things are possible, it's not 
decoration.

usually everything works out-of-the-box, assuming at least DMD is 
already setup.
only Dscanner must be setup manually, but it's not a central 
component, it's just used to perform the static checks, without 
visual feedback in the editor (i.e read wave under the problem) 
but rather a dump of the output stream in the messages.

As for a professional usage of CE i didn't detect any clue 
indicating this (e.g inside bug reports or after annoucment, 
nobody never tolds "**we** would need this or that").

Basile B. <b2.temp gmx.com> writes:

On Saturday, 13 August 2016 at 17:51:30 UTC, Basile B. wrote:
 On Saturday, 28 May 2016 at 20:23:34 UTC, Guido wrote:
 Coedit with metad,

 metad is not really useful anymore. It was created at a time 
 where CE didn't handle DUB projects (2014). I still maintain it 
 for my own usage, that's the only reason. It's also been 
 usefull 3 or 4 times to detect DMD regressions and more 
 recently to test a new feature (project groups, batch 
 compilation):

 https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/16154339/17611474/e71e9796-6047-11e6-9747-d6380d289a07.png

oh no the typo...

https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/16154339/17657022/526b794a-62c0-11e6-9f79-522490137670.png