Make it easy

[Ant]

I've used Dev C++ and found it really easy to use, but there's a few things I'd prefer changed. One, is that it is easy for Windows only programs. Two, is the program is written in Delphi.

Code::Blocks is written in C++, so that solves that problem. The other problem can also be solved fairly easily. What makes Dev C++ easy, is that there are example programs and that it is setup ready to use.

Here's what I'd like to see for Code::Blocks. I'd like to see WxWidgets or some other cross platform library come as part of it (more than one would be good nice), such that a complete idiot could install it and have everything ready to install sample programs. One click install, in other words. I'd like to see several sample programs using WxWidgets or some other cross platform library (which ever is installed), and everything tested so that they compile and run flawlessly (or most samples do anyway). Just some basic sample programs, like the ones Dev C++ comes with, only have them using cross platform library rather than using all Windows stuff.

Anyone willing to make something like that, to help us idiots out?

I am going to need to make a program for a machine I'm building, which I expect to bring Open Source into hardware in a very big way. It'll be a machine that can make just about anything, and will cost only a few hundred to make, and will have internet control to help provide work to people in poor countries. I expect this machine to help us end poverty.

If I can do it in Code::Blocks, with WxWidgets, I'd love that. Otherwise, I do have time to try and figure out how to blindly fix all the problems with my installation. So, if I can't have it fully setup for me, I'll be forced to use Dev C++ and make a windows only program.

If I can have samples, which will compile and run without problems, from that I can easily figure out everything else. Samples answer almost all questions that newbies have. If there's a sample program that does something similar, it is very easy to figure it out from the example.

Tony

[Jenna]

Do you know the scripted wizards ("File -> New -> Project...") ?
They do not all work flawlessly, and you might have to install the neded sdk's yourself.
But that's not so hard as it might look like.
A good startpoint is (for wxWidgets) the http://wiki.codeblocks.org/index.php?title=WxWindowsQuickRef

But there are many more articles to be found in the wiki.
All articles can be found here: http://wiki.codeblocks.org/index.php?title=Special:Allpages.

Some of the articles are a little bit outdated, but you should not forget, that all C::B developers have jobs to earn money and do developping in their sparetime.
And a wiki lives from the community of course.

[MortenMacFly]

Concerning the wxWidgets installer bundle: This has been discussed a lot. But I'll summarise my point of view again:

1.) C::B is an IDE that can not only be used with wxWidgets. This means if we want to provide a dev pack, where to start? What to bundle? Shall we bundle each and every library? For all platforms (which is impossible anyways...)?
2.) If a user cannot figure out how to get a library (s)he is using to work... I wouldn't want to try the applications (s)he writes. I think that belongs to the absolute minimum knowledge you need anyways when you want to use a library.
3.) wxWigets might be a special case due to the fact that C::B is built with it ships with a plugin called wxSmith. OK. But if we bundle wxWidgets we nearly double the download bandwidth (not taking several platforms into account). We (in fact a single person) already pays the fees for that himself. Donations are welcome but very rare.
4.) Getting wxWidgets to work/build is really easy if one tries. I for myself when I was a wxWidgets newbie got it to work in half an hour. So I really don't get where the trouble comes from. In addition there is plenty of information not only in our WiKi how to get wxWidgets (samples) up and running, including wxPack which is very nice for newbies.
5.) I think in general it would be a great user contribution to C::B to create a wxWidgets bundle one can download and start. Out installer is a good starting point and if one has enough bandwidth we would be willing to host the links on C::B... for sure.

So... how to decide?

[mandrav]

The main problem is not the bandwidth or the money. Instead it's that we 'd have to provide all kinds of possible wx builds (unicode/ansi, monolithic/multi, static/dll and all combinations of those). It's like recreating wxPack, in which case why can't the user download wxPack (instead of duplicating efforts)?
I for one, install wxPack on windows and everything's working fine straight away. Gone are the days I used to build wx by myself... .

[ollydbg]

One month ago, I'm totally a newbie to both codeblocks and wxWidgets(under windows). But I think a installer with wxWidgets library is not necessary. Because wxPack is 300M+, and codeblocks&mingw is only 20M+, And It's easy to use download and use wxWigets.
Simple steps:

• install codeblocks
• install wxPack(which contains pre-build libraries for both mingw and VC) or download wxWidgets source and build yourself
• create a sample with wxWidgets wizard, something like ("File -> New -> Project...") as jens mentioned

In fact, wxWidgets has many samples under "wxWidgets-installed-folder\samples", there are project file support VC6, dev-c++, ..., but unluckily I can't find any *.cbp files. And it is not easy to convert these sample projects to codeblocks' format. (Even codeblocks has functionality to import other project from *.dsw, I still need to change the library, the pre-compiled option... which is too annoying for a newbie).

So, what I hope is someone can supply *.cbp files for every samples.   

[stahta01]

So, what I hope is someone can supply *.cbp files for every samples.   

I plan to do that this year; when I have time and energy to do it.

Tim S