Programs for Coding / Editing smaugFUSS

Hi there.

I'm a long time MUDer (since 1995) and have alot of administrative/building experience. However, the process of diving into C coding and editing SMAUG is pretty daunting.

My question is: what are the best programs for a Windows XP user to edit and compile code? Presently I have cygwin on my machine just to run the MUD.

I know there's a good editer out there for C that assigns colors to certain pieces of code to help better organize it. I'd prefer something like that, but I forgot what I once used when I first started.

Any suggestions for C / SMAUG coding software?

Editing and compiling are rather different processes that use completely different sets of tools. If you have Cygwin, then you already probably have everything you need, namely 'make', 'gcc'. If you can go to your src directory, type 'make clean', 'make' and then run the game without problems, you're set.


For editing, personally I use vim, but it's not the easiest to learn. Nick has an excellent guide to it on this website: http://www.gammon.com.au/smaug/vi.htm

You can also use:

Crimson Editor. I used this before vim, it's a good program.

SCiTE. I've never used it, but many do and seem content with it.

Emacs. Don't use it myself, but many people do. Like vim, it can be a little hard to learn at first (a lot of the commands require escape codes etc.) It might be easier to learn than vim, though.

Notepad always works, too.

Microsoft released an Express version of their C/C++ development environment. You won't be able to compile with it, unless you have a Win32 compatible version of SMAUG, but you can edit the source with it.

Eclipse has plugins to let you code in C/C++. They don't seem quite mature to me, though, and sometimes don't work quite as I'd expect them to. In fairness, I haven't used them in a while, though.


This should be enough to get you started. Let me know if you need more information. :)

Dev-C++ is also a great editor for Windows. Like Ksilyan said about the MS editor, you won't be able to compile SMAUG with it unless you have a Win32 version of SMAUG.

However, if you plan to do any more programming beyond SMAUG (for learning purposes or otherwise), Dev-C++ is a very wise choice for an editor/compiler.

Don't use Notepad, it adds strange things to your files that you don't want in them. If you end up deciding to just use a plain text editor that doesn't do syntax based coloring anyway, download a copy of EditPad Lite. It does the job very nicely and has most of the features that the 'better' editors have and it's free and easy to learn. If you've got the spare cash, get the registered version and you'll have even more features including syntax based coloring and much much more.

The extra characters that Notepad adds are probably the line breaks, and those can be easily removed with utilities like dos2unix. And most compilers don't even care about them; after all, whitespace in C is irrelevant.

For what it's worth, I would advise against buying a text editor unless it has some particularly unique feature. There are so many free, full-featured text editors that I really don't see the point in buying one.

Thanks guys.

After doing a little searching, I found gVIM. Any opinions on using it to do SMAUG / C code? (does it lack, does it do the job?)

Textpad www.textpad.com is a good, free text editor. Line numbers, matching braces, good search/replace, etc. Also, many add ons for it regarding coding, formatting, etc.
Check it out.

gVim is not at all lacking, on the contrary, it is probably more powerful than all the traditional Windows editors... once you know how to use it. You'll just have to learn how to use it... :-) (gVim is just vim with a graphical interface.)

I'll have to check out textpad, but I thought it wasn't free, which is why I'd avoided it before.

I agree with Ksilyan on that one, I wouldn't spend on a text editor myself at all, just offering the option since it does exist, but if you like gvim, that's prolly the best route you can take, but it does take some learning.

Oops, upon checking at the Textpad site, I find that Textpad is not free. You can download an 'Evaluation' copy, which is fully functional, but if you like the program you are supposed to buy it. (about 29$ US)
I agree though, that there are many alternatives, and I wouldn't pay for a text editor to modify Smaug files...

Gadush

With all the free tools available, pretty much the only time I would pay for a development tool would be if I needed to do something specifically with MS Visual Studio, and it was a commercial application. They have Express versions that are free, but I don't think you can sell commercial software compiled from Express versions.

Basically it's possible (if sometimes annoying, because most people assume you have MSVS) to completely replace your toolchain with free tools.

I use:
- Cygwin, or Linux proper (I have a dedicated Linux machine running) for Unixy stuff
- Eclipse for Java editing and compiling
- gcc suite for compiling
- vim for all other text editing
- mingw32 for compiling Windows programs

It's the last one that's the most annoying to use, and since I don't write commercial software on my own I usually just use the Express version. (I actually have a full albeit academic version, but I haven't installed it because of how much it messed with your system.)


Anyhow, I truly can't understand why you would pay for a text editor unless it has something really, really special about it. Crimson Editor, to name just one, is a wonderful free editor that works like a very enhanced Notepad (i.e. no "weird" interfacing). Emacs and gVim both exist, free for all uses, on Windows. The only penalty is that you have to learn them.

Compiling is a different matter, of course, but even that isn't so bad to solve if you're not selling commercial software. If you want MSVC++, just use the Express version.

Textpad *is* practically free.
The evaluation version is fully functional, with a 1-second reminder screen on startup that I don't even notice anymore.

I've been using it for four years now without paying a cent >.>