Trying Eclipse CDT

I have been reading this article from IBM community, “Migrate Visual Studio C and C++ projects to Eclipse CDT”.

Definitely, it is a good introdution to follow. And I have tried it. However, I never wanna use Visual C++ this time. Alternatively, I use Borland C++Builder. As a result, there are a few differences.

1. For BDS 2006 users you must have the bdsproj2mak plug-in (which is a free download for all registered users at Borland.com, now codegear.com. After installing it, you can export a makefile from BDS2006. The menu item “Export makefile…” is under “Project”.
2. There is no need to add INCLUDE and LIB for BCB makefiles because the paths will be set by the makefile during build process.
3. Although the Borland make utility shares the same name with the GNU one (make.exe), when “Create Make Target” you still need to uncheck the “Use Default” checkbox. In the “Make Target” textbox, you should enter -f *.mak instead.
4. There is no need to modified the makefile generated by BDS2006. Thus, I tried to migrate a HelloWorld project and it worked.

However, it seems that CDT is still very naive. Compared to Borland’s out-of-date product C++BuilderX, CDT is no more than a toy. It seems that MOST efforts of the Eclipse Community are focused on the Java Side and CDT is not supported as much as it needs. If you really need to develop C++ on Linux or MacOSX, why not put more pressure on CodeGear from Borland? If they make a decision of reviving C++BuilderX and moving it to Eclipse Platform, I believe it will play better than CDT in many ways.