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 tool for producing configure scripts for building, installing, and packaging software on computer systems where a Bourne shell is available.
The GNU Autotools, also known as the GNU Build System, is a suite of programming tools designed to assist in making source code packages portable to many Unix-like systems.
In computer programming, 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 build automation tool that builds executable programs and libraries from source code by reading files called makefiles which specify how to derive the target program. Though integrated development environments and language-specific compiler features can also be used to manage a build process, Make remains widely used, especially in Unix and Unix-like operating systems.
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.
A cross compiler is a compiler capable of creating executable code for a platform other than the one on which the compiler is running. For example, a compiler that runs on a PC but generates code that runs on Android devices is a cross compiler.
MinGW, formerly mingw32, is a free and open source software development environment to create Microsoft Windows applications.
SCons is a computer software build tool that automatically analyzes source code file 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 analogous to the traditional GNU build system based on the make utility and the autoconf tools.
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.
In software development, CMake is cross-platform free and open-source software for build automation, testing, packaging and installation of software by using a compiler-independent method. CMake is not a build system itself; it generates another system's build files. It supports directory hierarchies and applications that depend on multiple libraries. It can invoke native build environments such as Make, Qt Creator, Ninja, Android Studio, Apple's Xcode, and Microsoft Visual Studio. It has minimal dependencies, requiring only a C++ compiler on its own build system.
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.
A configure script is an executable script designed to aid in developing a program to be run on a wide number of different computers. It matches the libraries on the user's computer, with those required by the program before compiling it from its source code.
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.
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 is free and open-source software written in Python, under the Apache License 2.0.
