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How would one go about using a different IDE with DarkGDK? I imagine it's not as simple as just including DarkGDK.h and compiling with MinGW.

I ask this because I'm not sure how much longer I can stand VS...

What's wrong with VS? (not that I'm a Microsoft fan)

Here are my thoughts:

1. It's the opposite of light weight.
2. The 'intellisense' works about 25% of the time.
3. As far as I can tell, you can't have multiple source windows open at the same time, only tabs. If you do change the option to 'multiple windows', they are still constrained to the small area within the program. I'd like to be able to pop them out.
4. You can't just write some code and compile it as you could with MinGW + Notepad, you have to make a 'project', which is annoying for small tests.

Honestly though my main beef is the crappy code-completion. Half the time when I'm coding it fails to pop up with any suggestions and the text at the bottom says something about how intellisense couldn't recognize the phrase, even though I'm 100% it's correct. I have to delete it and type it 5-10 times and maybe compile once or twice before it will finally recognize it. And it's not even a new command that it perhaps hasn't indexed yet, it will be something that I've gotten suggestions for a million times in the past, just for some reason not this time.

Normally this wouldn't be that big of a problem but since the multiple windows option is mostly uselses, I can't keep my header file open for reference either.

You mean for multiple files open something like this :



Visual Studio's IDE is one of the most flexible around. You can basically pull the entire thing out into windows and move what you want, where you want, to make it the way that allows you to work most efficiently. You can hide and show windows and add custom ones, if you really didnt like the text editor, im sure you could get some form of replacement one as an addon feature, or even write it yourself.

The intellisense thing is a problem that I have aswell, and while im sure that it's something that is solveable, its not that big of a deal for me that I have bothered trying to solve it. The cause is due to the fact that intellisense is driven by a database that is stored and maintained by the IDE. This database is not updated constantly non-stop in real-time as doing so would cause slowdowns. Im not sure exactly how it updates, but im fairly certain that the way in which it is being updated is causing the problem. It tends to manifest more frequently for me while im in the middle of typing out half-complete functions and things like that(ie. the closing brace isnt present yet, or the function isnt prototyped yet), but not so often while im editting an already completed function....

I would reccomend sticking with Visual Studio though, as it is the "official" IDE for DarkGDK, and you will have a hard time getting DarkGDK specific support for another IDE as virtually noone else will be using it, not to mention that DarkGDK is compiled with Visual Studio itself so may not be fully compatible with other C++ implementations(Microsoft used to have a nasty reputation for it's c++ implementation not playing nicely with other implementations due to small "proprietry" features... I do believe that those kinds of things have been mostly eliminated(since v7 - v6.0 and below were the trouble makers), and MSVC++ complies quite well with the C++ standard now.) and those problems between implementations might not be able to be tracked TO the compiler as the problem, leaving you chasing your tail with seemingly unsolvable bugs...

That said, I do believe that if you wanted to get into the whole command line compiling, you could setup a different IDE to use the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler and linker(I have no idea how, but I do remember reading in a forums somewhere about a bloke using borland's IDE with MSVC++'s compiler and linker(many years ago, I think it was v6), though it looked like a technical nightmare for the poor guy to get going.)

By multiple files I mean more like having two notepad windows open. Not a divided view of one window.

I certainly agree that Visual Studio is quite customize-able, though perhaps not in the way I'd prefer. However, what I don't understand is why a large company like Microsoft could fail to make as usable an IDE as say, FlashDevelop, or Eclipse.

MinGW is a port of gcc.it is not an IDE but a compiler.
It should certainly be possible to use the MSVC compiler with soemthing like eclipse if you can set it up correctly - the compiler and ide are separate.

May I suggest people try the "VisualStudio 2010 (beta 1)".
It is one of the best IDEs I have come across, and should be out of Beta some time this year from what I have heard.

I have been using it and find it slow and unstable, but I agree it will be very good when released finally.

Hi
I use Visual Studio 2008 a lot, I am curious to know how 2010 is better ... what else does it do for example ?

PS: Can anyone tell me if Dark GDK will use a Direct-X SDK that is latter than 2007 or is it 'stuck' with this older one. It makes little difference to me personally but I am considering using at a college where we have SDK 2008 (or latter ?) installed.

Thanks