[MBDyn-devel] Building MBDyn in a C/C++ IDE

[patrick.rix at online.de]

Hello MBDyn user & developer community,

I'm new to MBDyn and have just started to try to get into the MBDyn-codes more in detail.
As I'm right at the beginning I'm looking for an adaquate C/C++ IDE for exploring the code (and later making own developments). 
Up to now I found Eclipse with the CDT-plugin (C/C++ DevelopementToolkit) to be a nice IDE because it is OpenSource, available on Windows(+Cygwin) and Linux, it uses GCC as compiler, GDB as debugger and the GNU-toolchain for building the project - so all in all quite close to the autotoolset-building system MBDyn ships with. I succeeded in setting up MBDyn as a C/C++ project in Eclipse/CDT (on Windows+Cygwin) which compiles and runs correctly - but before continuing I would like to check if there are any better solutions / IDE-alternatives.

So I would like to ask if there exist experiences in building MBDyn in other IDEs (e.g. free ones like Kdevelop, DevC++, or commercial ones like Borland Builder or Microsoft VisualC++ , etc.). What were difficulties, what is the strenght of the alternative system, what are disadvantages, etc.
Any report or comment on that would be highly appreciated.


To report about importing MBDyn into Elcipse (on Windows+Cygwin) this was relatively easy due to the fact that Eclipse uses gcc + gdb as default compiler / debugger. No changes to the MBDyn-code were necessary - all that had to be done was to "clone" the structure & module dependencies from the actual build-system into the appropriate fields for the path settings and compiler / linker commands.
I realised the project as close as possible to the original structure and organised it in several separate static library-projects just as the original does. A little bit tricky was the mixing of C/C++ with Fortran but I found some workaround.

If someone is interested in the MBDyn-Eclipse-project and wants to have a copy he can send me a mail to  <patrick.rix at online.de>  .


For the ones who do not know what Eclipse and CDT is here are some links for more information:

<http://www.eclipse.org/>    see the sceenshots and 'Language IDE' to get a first idea of Eclpise
<http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/CDT:Presentations>
<http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~eclipse/7-EclipseCDT.pdf>   see the pictures to get an idea of how looks the CDT-IDE like
<http://www.eclipse.org/cdt/>   this is the main page of the the CDT-plugin project 

Regards, Patrick.