An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source-code editor, build automation tools, and a debugger. Some IDEs, such as IntelliJ IDEA, Eclipse and Lazarus contain the necessary compiler, interpreter or both; others, such as SharpDevelop and NetBeans, do not.
A package manager or package-management system is a collection of software tools that automates the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing computer programs for a computer in a consistent manner.
GNU Autoconf is a software development tool for generating a configure script that in turn generates files for building a codebase and for packaging or installing the resulting files. Autoconf is part of the GNU Build System – along with Automake, Libtool, Autoheader and other tools.
The GNU Autotools, also known as the GNU Build System, is a suite of build automation tools designed to support building source code and packaging the resulting binaries. It supports building a codebase for multiple target systems without customizing or modifying the code. It is available on many Linux distributions and Unix-like environments.
GNU Libtool is a software development tool, part of the GNU build system, consisting of a shell script created to address the software portability problem when compiling shared libraries from source code. It hides the differences between computing platforms for the commands which compile shared libraries. It provides a command-line interface that is identical across platforms and it executes the platform's native commands.
In software development, Make is a command-line interface software tool that performs actions ordered by configured dependencies as defined in a configuration file called a makefile. It is commonly used for build automation to build executable code from source code. But, not limited to building, Make can perform any operation available via the operating system shell.
KDevelop is a free and open-source integrated development environment (IDE) for Unix-like computer operating systems and Windows. It provides editing, navigation and debugging features for several programming languages, and integration with build automation and version-control systems, using a plugin-based architecture.
MinGW, formerly mingw32, is a free and open source software development environment to create Microsoft Windows applications.
SCons is a software development tool that analyzes source code dependencies and operating system adaptation requirements from a software project description and generates final binary executables for installation on the target operating system platform. Its function is similar to the more popular GNU build system.
Maven is a build automation tool used primarily for Java projects. Maven can also be used to build and manage projects written in C#, Ruby, Scala, and other languages. The Maven project is hosted by The Apache Software Foundation, where it was formerly part of the Jakarta Project.
make menuconfig is one of five similar tools that can configure Linux source, a necessary early step needed to compile the source code. make menuconfig, with a menu-driven user interface, allows the user to choose the features of Linux that will be compiled. It is normally invoked using the command make menuconfig; menuconfig is a target in Linux Makefile.
CMake is a free, cross-platform, software development tool for building applications via compiler-independent instructions. It also can automate testing, packaging and installation. It runs on a variety of platforms and supports many programming languages.
CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS are either the name of environment variables or of Makefile variables that can be set to specify additional switches to be passed to a compiler in the process of building computer software. FFLAGS fulfills a similar role.
As generated by the GNU Build System, a configure script is a Bash shell script that generates build configuration files for a codebase to facilitate cross-platform support. It generates files tailoring for the host system – the environment on which the codebase is built and run.
makedepend is a Unix tool used to generate dependencies of C source files. A Microsoft Windows version was made available in 2002 and last updated in 2007 on UnxUtils.
GnuCOBOL is a free implementation of the COBOL programming language that is part of the GNU project. GnuCOBOL translates the COBOL code into C and then compiles it using the native C compiler.
Scratchbox 2 is a cross-compilation toolkit designed to make embedded Linux application development easier. It also provides a full set of tools to integrate and cross-compile an entire Linux distribution.
Buildroot is a set of Makefiles and patches that simplifies and automates the process of building a complete and bootable Linux environment for an embedded system, while using cross-compilation to allow building for multiple target platforms on a single Linux-based development system. Buildroot can automatically build the required cross-compilation toolchain, create a root file system, compile a Linux kernel image, and generate a boot loader for the targeted embedded system, or it can perform any independent combination of these steps. For example, an already installed cross-compilation toolchain can be used independently, while Buildroot only creates the root file system.
Meson is a software tool for automating the building (compiling) of software. Meson adopts a convention over configuration approach, promoting standard development tools and practice instead of providing unlimited flexibility to the user. Meson is free and open-source software written in Python, under the Apache License 2.0.
