I am attempting to switch from Source Insight to Code::Blocks (I would like to save the company some money).
I have tried a few things, and I'm not sure I'm setting things up correctly, but I've noticed a few things that are making the switch difficult to sell to others here. I shall list them here. First, let me describe my configuration.
0. C::B 12.11 full install
1. Dell Precision T3600 8G. Windows 7 Enterprise. Code::Blocks is run in Admin mode. Virus/malware scanner has an exception for anything in C::B directory.
2. All code is located on a network filer, accessed using SMB mapped drives. This one is not changeable, unfortunately.
3. I have created one giant project with all files in it. The reason for this is that we have a number of platforms we support, with some shared files and many not shared. I am also often creating and destroying views (we use ClearCase) so the codebase I work on isn't the same for very long. Creating a project per set of shared files for each platform would be the correct way to do it, but it is cumbersome, and is wasted time if the view is going away in a few days. Setting up some scripts to autogenerate the project structure might work out since the project structure is basically the same, just the files included are different. I would still need to use the "1 parser per workspace" mode I guess because I need all the symbols from all the projects in the code completion.
4. The project consists of 10451 files with 16.7M sloc (used the code statistics plugin for that!).
5. The project files will never be inside the same tree as the source files. There are very few developers here who like having their source code mixed in with its meta data (docs, diagrams, project files, etc. -- Makefiles are the only exception).
6. Code is a mix of C/C++ files, Makefiles, and perl. The perl runs under x86 (on a build server) to generate some code. All other code is cross-compiled (on a build server) for some embedded targets.
7. Most of the files are not changing every day.
8. Due to confidentiality, I cannot submit any of my projects or source as examples. I'm sorry.
And now for the comments. Please do not take these as complaints, but merely as observations and comparisons. You all have done great work so far. =)
A. Workspace Management
A.1. Project load time
It takes roughly a minute to load this project in C::B, during which Windows believes C::B is not responding. Loading the same project in SI takes 2 seconds. SI doesn't have the ability to tell me in the tree control that a file is RW/RO, nor does it know if the file exists or not until I try to open it. I read some discussions here regarding all the things you do at project load time (I was trying to track down why it was so slow for me) to build the tree and I wonder if some of them are not really necessary or should have options to disable. For example, updating whether a file is there or not or RW/RO when I try to open it might be good enough (rather than at project open time). Also, I'm not sure, but it looks like SI is doing a lazy load of the tree structure as I browse through it (rather than all at once). That might help here too (are you creating the entire tree structure at project open time?). If the tree nodes themselves can be cached/reused that might help (with speed and mem usage) if you aren't doing that already (or wxWidgets isn't). Also, SI makes me specify the top level root directory of my project at project creation time. This keeps them from having to discover this, which I understand can be a source of a lot of the load time (and some interesting logic) in C::B (and some improvements are on the way it seems). Any files in SI which reside under the project path are stored with relative paths, all others are absolute.
A.2. Open last workspace on startup
I can't find any option to open the last workspace I was using (including all window positions and open projects and files) on startup. This would be really helpful. The only option I found was default or blank, neither of which reopens projects I had open when I shutdown the app last time. If this exists, please let me know where.
A.2. List view
I would love to see a list view of all the project files with a combo box with search capability like SI has. This is not the same thing as disabling the "Display folders as on disk" option. I use the SI list control exclusively rather than browse a file tree looking for stuff, as more often than not, I know exactly what file I'm looking for, and its just plain faster to start typing it in, get it autocompleted, hit enter, and its open! I realize that the tree is better for project exploration, and I realize that the list with search is a feature request (does wxWidgets even provide something like this?). Where do I submit feature requests? Bugtracker?
A.3. Context window
SI has a really cool reference tracking thingie that is really useful. Basically, it is just a window pane that displays the location of the code to which your cursor is referring. So, for example, if your cursor is on a function invocation, it displays the definition of that function in the context window. It does this on the fly. References which resolve to multiple entries show up as a list so you can pick between them. Clicking on the code in the context window opens that file and goes to that line in a main editor window. This is another feature request unless there is a plugin which does this already and I've missed it?
B. Code completion
B.1. Parse time.
It takes overnight to parse this project (I let it go for 4 hours yesterday, and it was still going when I left work. Today when I came in, it was finally done, so I'm not exactly sure how long it took). During this entire parse time, the editor interface is laggy (just clicking to position the cursor takes some time, and typing is behind by 1/2 char to a few chars) and at random times the entire interface becomes completely unresponsive (according to windows) for a minute or so. CPU utilization is only 5-7% the entire time. Memory was up to about 1G, # handles > 10k during the parsing. Disabling the code completion plugin makes the lagginess and hangs go away, but, well, no code completion then. Disabling the code completion toolbar seems to have no effect on the lagginess.
For comparison, SI creates its cc database for the first parse within 5 minutes for the same project if I ask it to do it in the foreground (get a progress bar and everything). The SI background parser takes much longer (about an hour), but doesn't interfere with the editing of any files (it also updates the status window when not in use with the paths of the files it is parsing). If references haven't been parsed by the time you try to look one up, then it just says so. But really, the up-front foreground parsing with incremental background re-parsing is really fast. Perhaps another feature request?
[Update] I did another full reparse today and it only took a little over an hour. That's good, and matches SI's background parse. However, I can't use the editor during this time. If I could get a consistent 1 hour bg parse and not have it interfere with the editor, and if I could get an option to foreground parse that is much shorter...
B.2. Reparse every time?
It looks like I have to wait to reparse each project every time I close/reopen C::B. SI saves the parse data in a database file (not sure what they use). This means that I don't have to reparse each time I load up a project, which takes tons of time (see B.1). Is there an option to save the parse and disable the reparse on each load? Does your parser check for modified files (since last reparse time) and only reparse those? Could it? =)
C. Symbol browser
C.1. Pane sizing
It seems this thing resizes itself to maximize the bottom pane and minimize the top one, especially when parsing is incomplete. I think it would be better if it resized the top pane to fit the contents, and gave whatever is left to the bottom window. Or allow a user to position it and save that setting in the workspace, maybe? Or both (with an option to choose between auto-resize and user-fixed size)?
C.2. Symbol parsing
It looks like the symbol parsing for the current focused file editor is not done until the entire project parse is done (or maybe it's because the file I'm testing is way down in the list). SI always does the currently-focused file right away, as it is usually a quick parse to do one file. If symbol references to other files are not finished yet in the overall bg parse, then they show up as undefined / not linked.
D. Editor window
I look forward to the renewed efforts (Alpha) in Semantic Highlighting going on in the fora. Based on comments, I can see some issues with the way code completion, symbol browsing, and SH are currently coupled, though.
E. Building/compiling
I would love to be building over ssh using custom Makefiles, with the build results parsed by C::B (and remote debugging would be awesome, too). I saw this:
http://forums.codeblocks.org/index.php/topic,6289.0.html, but there were a few issues that weren't resolved in that thread. And that was 2007; is there a doc somewhere that describes how to do this in the newer versions?
Thanks for listening. I really like this software and I want to make it better (and I would love to convice all the SIers at work to use it instead). I may be able to spend some time working on some of the features or bugs I've mentioned.
