Code::Blocks
Entry posted by Canardia ·
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I'm testing Code::Blocks with LE2, instead of Visual Studio 2008/2010.
So far it seems quite nice, and very intuitive to learn and configure.
I already found some benefits of Code::Blocks over Visual Studio:
1) LE2 syntax highlighting can be configured to be different from the built-in C++ keywords. In VS they always have the same color.
2) Compiling time is much faster, because it can use MinGW.
3) Generated code is much faster, because it can use -O3 and -O6 optimizations.
4) Loading the IDE is much faster.
5) Compiling can be configured to stop at the first error, while in Visual Studio it always tries to compile the whole source code first which takes ages and is useless if there was a first error.
6) Code::Blocks works also on Mac and Linux, so you can have the same IDE under any OS.
7) Using MinGW in Code::Blocks gets rid of the VS RunTime needs, which needs the user to install MSVCRT90.dll, or you to include them in an Microsoft.VC90.CRT folder with your game.
8) Intellisense is super fast and smart. It shows only keywords which match what you typed so far, and it works with LE2 commands too.
9) Code::Blocks work also with Wine in Linux, while Visual Studio does not, so you can use Linux to write and play your LE2 games. Wine runs also LE2 games 20 FPS faster than Windows XP (and of course much faster than Vista/7, since XP is much faster than those).
10) Showing/hiding the console window of LE2 can be easily turned on/off in Code::Blocks with the -mwindows linker option, while in Visual Studio you need either some preprocessor pragmas or some complicated System target settings.
11) Code::Blocks cleans up whitespaces after lines automatically, while in Visual Studio you have to do this manually.
I will make a tutorial how to setup a LE2 project with Code::Blocks next.
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