KDevelop

KDevelop

File:KDevelop icon.png
Screenshot  File:Kdevelop-screenshot.png KDevelop in IDEAl mode
Developer(s)	KDevelop Team
Initial release	1.0 (1999-12-6)
Written in	C++
Operating system	Unix-like
Platform	KDE
Available in	more than 30 languages
Type	Integrated development environment
License	GNU General Public License
Website	http://www.kdevelop.org/

KDevelop is a free software integrated development environment for the KDE desktop environment for Unix-like computer operating systems. KDevelop does not include a compiler; instead, it uses an external compiler such as gcc to produce executable code.

The current version, 3.5.5, supports many programming languages such as Ada, Bash, C, C++, Fortran, Java, Pascal, Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby. Released under the GNU General Public License, KDevelop is free software.

History

KDevelop 1.x and 2.x were developed over a period of four years from the initial KDevelop codebase. Bernd Gehrmann started a complete rewrite from scratch and announced KDevelop 3.x with this mail: A new IDE for a new millennium, on March 30, 2001. Its first release was together with KDE 3.2 in February 2004. The development of KDevelop 3.x stopped in 2008. KDevelop 4.x has been under development since August 2005. It is a complete rewrite with a better core and a more object oriented programming model. Its first release is planned for the end of March 2010.

Features

KDevelop uses an embedded text editor component through the KPart framework. The default editor is KDE Advanced Text Editor, which can optionally be replaced with a Qt Designer-based 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.
• GUI Designer
• 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.
• Revision control (also known as SCM) support. Supported systems include CVS, Subversion, Perforce and ClearCase.

KDevelop 3 is a completely plugin-based architecture. When a developer makes a change, they only have to compile the plugin. There is a possibility to keep several profiles each of which determines which plugins to be loaded. KDevelop does not come with a text editor, but instead uses a plugin for this purpose as well. KDevelop is programming language-independent and build system-independent, supporting KDE, GNOME, and many other technologies such as Qt, GTK+, and wxWidgets.

KDevelop has a variety of supported languages, including C, C++, Perl, Python, PHP, Java, Fortran, Ruby, Ada, Pascal, SQL, and Bash scripting. Supported build systems include GNU (automake), cmake, qmake, and 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. KDevelop also offers a developer framework which helps to write new parsers for other programming languages.

An 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.

Currently, 50 to 100 plugins exist for the IDE. 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

• Anjuta
• Comparison of integrated development environments
• Kate
• List of KDE applications

Further reading

• Freehackers interview with KDevelop team
• KDE programming tutorial using KDevelop

External links

• KDevelop homepage
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