Answer by don

don — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 21:27:42 -0400

IMHO, the rookie must understand what a shell is, an ASCII file-C program and how to run gcc. This is before he attempts anything. This urge to "Why can't I just click?" irks me. Once he grasps a few basics, he will need a real IDE that can be used to throw up an X window or whatever. Skip the IDE it spoils noobs, I still don't use one........don

Answer by pcardout

pcardout — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 06:37:40 -0400

I was inspired by this thread:

Compiling and running straight from gedit

I like this solution because the beginner does not need to learn vim or emacs before starting to program. gedit (gnome-edit) is dead simple to use for most beginners who like pointing, clicking, cutting and pasting. Nonetheless, gedit does have syntax highlighting and parenthesis-matching (you need to turn bracket-matching on in your prefs.); certainly features that no programmer should do without. (Pity the poor Windows noobs who use Notepad). Further, gedit DOES have the ability for one click compiling and running -- it's just implemented in user scripts. So -- I explain the script system and provide some samples. After this you have a development environment that a beginner can use. I do assume that you are helping your beginner set this up.

Click Edit\Preferences, go to Plugins tab, and enable External Tools.
Go to Tools\External Tools and select New. A window will open with description A Brand New Tool.
Go down to the command and type echo Hello!.
Now when you execute Tools\New Tool you will see Hello! in your Shell Output window.
cd ~/.gnome2/gedit/tools; ls
You will see one or more scripts labeled new-tool
You can copy and edit these scripts to create new commands. Clearly you can do this through the interface mentioned in step 4, but you can't configure everything with that interface. In particular, you can't change the tool name, so that all your tools are called new-tool in the pull-down menu.
To create your first script, which will execute a program in your root directory,
cp new-tool execute in the directory you changed to in step 5.

Here is my execute script.

# [Gedit Tool] 
# Comment=Execute from current directory 
# Input=nothing
# Name=Execute
# Shortcut= Control>x
# Applicability=all
# Output=output-panel

echo -e "\nExecuting..." ;./${GEDIT_CURRENT_DOCUMENT_NAME%.*}

Here is my script called *CCompile_and_Execute*.

# [Gedit Tool] 
# Comment=C-Compile and Execute
# Input=nothing
# Name=C Compile and Execute
# Shortcut= Control>c
# Applicability=all
# Output=output-panel

echo -e "Compiling... \n"
echo "gcc $GEDIT_CURRENT_DOCUMENT_NAME -o${GEDIT_CURRENT_DOCUMENT_NAME%.*}"
gcc $GEDIT_CURRENT_DOCUMENT_NAME -o${GEDIT_CURRENT_DOCUMENT_NAME%.*}
echo -e "\nExecuting..."
./${GEDIT_CURRENT_DOCUMENT_NAME%.*}

A couple of notes:

These are ordinary bash scripts, but they have access to special environment variables (like GEDIT_CURRENT_DOCUMENT_NAME) and there are other special variables.
The comment lines in the scripts are actually recognized by gedit.
Should you wish to use a different compiler, just change gcc to g++, or whatever.
Now that you know how to directly edit these script files, you can add custom commands galore to gedit.

Answers to: Where can I get a simple Linux IDE (Integrated Development Environment)?

Answer by don

Answer by pcardout