Opinions on best software to develope C++ code with

[WinPooh]

vim + gcc

[Zach Wegner]

vim + gcc

Ditto.

[Guetti]

Xcode2.4.1 + gcc

[Dann Corbit]

If you only use Intel CPUs, then the Intel compiler is a nice choice.
The MS compiler is what I use most of the time, but GCC is pretty good for something you pay nothing for.

I would say that GCC + Eclipse + CDT is nearly the equal of the professional MS VC++ solution.

While the Mingw GCC compiler is way back on 3.x (and the Mingw team seems remarkably unconcerned about getting with the program) you can find ports of 4.x by "private citizens". If you choose the GCC route, I think that having 4.x is important because of the optimization features.

We have the zillion dollar MS VC solution here, which has the full optimization and profile stuff. (For instance, the professional version can do profile guided optimization, but you can't run the profiler!) If you choose the MS solution, I would check on the version you plan to buy to ensure that at least it has the full optimizer and can do profile guided optimization. You can get up to 1/3 more performance that way, and it is practically "for free" since you don't have to do any coding to get it.

[Cantor]

I think you can try first Visual C++ Express 2005: it is fast and it is free!
You can find other links on my blog or here,I don't know if it is "the best software", but you can always buy somethingelse later!
Nicola

[Onno Garms]

As you asked for opinions, I'll post mine (though there are already good answers).

Even today, I think that a good text editor (I use XEmacs, but if you are used to vi, that should also be OK) and a well-written makefile (not requiring you to keep track of dependencies manually) are a good choice. Those plus the free Gnu compiler are available even under Windows (Cygwin).

At work, I used to devolpe in above way, but for releases I compiled with Visual Studio 6. It was not good to use at those days, so I still developed with XEmacs and makefiles.. But starting with Visual Studio 7, I think this is more convenient for developing then XEmacs+makefile, so I use it as the only environment in some projects.

When I started with chess programming in my spare time, I was looking for a free alternative. I had heart a lot of Eclipse, so I decided to try. I found the CDT extremely disappointig and ran into many problems. Finally I gave up and reverted to good old emacs+makefile. I use that combination under Windows and Linux.

For Windows, I also found Visual Studio Express. I have not used it much so far, but I have found no limitations at all that affect chess programming. And its free. So if you are looking for a single environment, that might be the best choice.

At work, we noticed that the Intel compiler (plugable into Visual Studio) gives faster applications. If you are willing to spend extra money and already have a well running chess program, you might consider to buy it.

I agree that it is a good idea to use more than one compiler. However I believe that two or at most three are sufficient. Otherwise the overhead of maintaining compilabiliy for all the compilers would be too much. My compilers are currently gnu 3 under Cygwin, gnu 4 under Linux, and Visual Studio Express.

[Onno Garms]

And of course, don't forget
- version management (I am happy with CVS, heart bad stories about SourceSafe and SVN)
- a profiler (I found none of gprof, Quantify, valgrind fully satisfying; maybe valgrind is the one-eyed king in the land of blind)
- a tool to check for initialized variables, array bounds, memory issues etc

[Roman Hartmann]

Microsoft Visual C++ Express is not that bad and it's free. But emacs/vim in combination with gcc are ok too. Actually I used vim and the Mingw gcc for quite some time before I switched to Vicual C++ Express.

Roman

[Tord Romstad]

I have to give a different opinion on Mac developing. I've been using Xcode for the last couple of years and it's by far the worst IDE I've used in recent times.

I dislike XCode intensely, but I am not a great fan of IDEs in any case. They tend to make me feel claustrophobic.

My development tools for C/C++ programming in Mac OS X are:

• GNU make and the gcc compiler, the versions included in the OS X development tools.
• GNU Emacs. Not the crippled command line version shipped with OS X, but this one.
• The Darcs version control system.
• Apple's Shark profiler.
• The iTerm terminal emulator.

Fortunately there's the entire GCC suite behind it, which together with the Unix kernel makes for a very powerful environment. However, I've had much more fun programming Kiwi on Linux than Hamsters or Tickle (my arcade games emulator) on the Mac.

What Linux software do you miss when you develop on the Mac?

Tord

[Tord Romstad]

And of course, don't forget
- version management (I am happy with CVS, heart bad stories about SourceSafe and SVN)

I use CVS at my job, and have used SVN and Darcs privately. Of these three, I've found Darcs to be by far the most powerful, flexible and easy to use. I am not sure how well it works for large apps with multiple developers, but for a one-man project like a typical chess program it is extremely nice. I'll never go back to CVS or SVN.

To a large extent, the choice of version control system is probably a matter of taste, but I think using some kind of version control system is very important. I regret that I didn't do so from the beginning.

Tord