Author Topic: Is Code::Blocks discontinued?  (Read 10002 times)

backAgain120

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Is Code::Blocks discontinued?
« on: September 30, 2019, 05:43:45 pm »
Hi.

The title says it all. I was curious if Code::Blocks is a discontinued project. I am using Code::Blocks since about 2017 and I saw that the official GitHub Repository (https://github.com/jenslody/codeblocks) has been archived and that nobody seems to be working on Code::Blocks anymore since April 2018. The GNU/Linux packages also seem to be very old and the Debian package release even didn't work. But now to my second question and to the reason why I actually posted this in "Contributions to C::B". I wanted to ask if I could contribute with maintaining Code::Blocks. I have some experience with packaging and distributing software, so I for example could renew the GNU/Linux packages for Code::Blocks and also create new ones for Solus, openSUSE and even macOS (although I of course know that macOS is not GNU/Linux).

Thanks in advance for the answer(s)!

Offline oBFusCATed

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Re: Is Code::Blocks discontinued?
« Reply #1 on: September 30, 2019, 06:35:26 pm »
Hm, the title of the repo says that it is a mirror of the main SVN repo. This is a mirror of one of C::Bs developers (Jens), but he is busy with other stuff and it is not that active lately, so probably he doesn't update it. The actual/latest version of the source code is stored in SVN on sf.net at the moment.

There are various mirrors on github. Mine is here https://github.com/obfuscated/codeblocks_sf . It is mostly up-to-date (manually).

If you want to help you're welcome.
For packaging stuff you could look at our night build section to see the latest packages and what is missing. Generally packaging for debian distros should be easy, because we ship the needed recipe files and you just need to run the correct build command.

I have interest to setup some service which can build packages automatically, but other than Open Build Service I don't know any which will build and serve packages. Currently my github mirror is set to build on travis-ci, but there is no easy way to upload every build somewhere and it also builds for some old ubuntu...

My opinion is that C::B on macOS is not in a shippable condition and until some massive problems are fixed it is better to not provide official packages. If you're interested in fixing the bugs I know of, I'll be happy to explain what needs to be done. :)
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backAgain120

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Re: Is Code::Blocks discontinued?
« Reply #2 on: September 30, 2019, 06:56:39 pm »
Thank you for your reply. I actually got Code::Blocks working on macOS Mojave (although I didn't compile it myself, since the compilation terminated with lots of errors). I installed it with homebrew and got it running with XQuartz, but gcc/clang didn't work in it. The main reason why I actually thought that Code::Blocks is discontinued because the GNU/Linux packages on the website seem to be really old. The rpms are for Fedora 26 and 27 as far as I know, and this Fedora versions are already pretty old. What do you exactly mean by setting up a service which builds packages automatically? Something like Snapcraft, Flatpak or AppImages which make Code::Blocks available on multiple GNU/Linux distributions? I know how to use Snapcraft and I actually saw that there is a flatpak release of Code::Blocks 17.12 (but it's 1,9 GB large with the SDKs and so on). AppImages also aren't that complicated to create as far as I know. If you want I could create a snap and/or a AppImage and release it. Unfortunately I won't be able to help with the programming part since I'm still a very young programmer and C and Ruby are the only languages I'm good at, but I for example also could help with the localization of the website if possible. I'm bilingual.
« Last Edit: September 30, 2019, 06:58:24 pm by backAgain120 »

Offline oBFusCATed

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Re: Is Code::Blocks discontinued?
« Reply #3 on: September 30, 2019, 07:15:25 pm »
By service: I mean something that could build packages for multiple distros with a single button and provides a way to download the packages.

About modern packaging systems: Building flatpaks requires major changes to the software, because flatpak apps run in sandbox and the codeblocks executable doesn't have access to the system compiler. There are special steps which need to be done in order to make this happen. I guess that's why the current flatpak is so big. Currently I'm not interested doing this work. No idea about appimage or the ubuntu thingy.

About macos: It is possible to build native codeblocks using the native libs. But you need to have really latest wxWidgets built - wx-master or at least wx3.1.2.
(most of the time I ignore long posts)
[strangers don't send me private messages, I'll ignore them; post a topic in the forum, but first read the rules!]