KDevelop

KDevelop

KDevelop 4
Developer(s) KDE
Initial release December 6, 1999[1]
Stable release 4.7.1
Preview release None [±]
Written in C, C++
Operating system Unix-like
Platform KDE Platform
Available in Multilingual[2]
Type Integrated development environment
License GNU General Public License
Website www.kdevelop.org

KDevelop is a free software integrated development environment (IDE) for the KDE Platform on Unix-like computer operating systems. KDevelop includes no compiler; instead, it uses an external compiler such as GCC or Clang to produce executable binaries.

The current version, 4.7.1, was officially released on 6 February 2015, and will be the last version to use Qt 4 and KDElibs 4, as the next major release will rely on Qt 5 and KDE Frameworks 5.[3] It builds on various KDE Platform 4 technologies and supports C, C++, PHP and Python development, among others.

The last stable release of the previous major version, 3.5.5, which is based on K Desktop Environment 3 technology, supports many programming languages such as Ada, Bash, C, C++, Fortran, Java, Pascal, Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby. Released under the GNU General Public License, KDevelop is free software.

History

KDevelop Meeting
Year Venue Date Notes
2008[4] Munich, Germany 4/12-4/18
2009[5] Mykolayiv, Ukraine 4/19-4/26
2010[6] Berlin, Germany 2/13-2/21 co-hosted with Kate and Okteta Meeting
2012[7] Vienna, Austria 23–29th Oct co-hosted with Kate Meeting

KDevelop 1.x and 2.x were developed over a period of four years from the initial KDevelop codebase.[8] Bernd Gehrmann started a complete rewrite from scratch and announced KDevelop 3.x on March 30, 2001.[9] Its first release was together with K Desktop Environment 3.2 in February 2004. The development of KDevelop 3.x stopped in 2008.

KDevelop 4.x has been under development since August 2005. It is a complete rewrite with a better core and a more object-oriented programming model.[10] In May 2010, the final version of KDevelop 4.0.0 was released.[11]

KDevelop 4.7 will mark the final feature release of KDevelop for KDE 4. Further development will continue using KDE Frameworks 5.[12][13]

Features

KDevelop uses an embedded text editor component through the KPart framework. The default editor is KDE Advanced Text Editor, which can optionally be replaced with a Qt Designer-based editor. This list focuses on the features of KDevelop itself. For features specific to the editor component, see the article on Kate.

KDevelop 4 is a completely plugin-based architecture. When a developer makes a change, they only must compile the plugin. There is a possibility to keep several profiles each of which determines which plugins to be loaded. KDevelop does not come with a text editor, but instead uses a plugin for this purpose as well. KDevelop is programming language independent and build system-independent, supporting KDE, GNOME, and many other technologies such as Qt, GTK+, and wxWidgets.

KDevelop has supported a variety of programming languages, including C, C++, Perl, Python, PHP, Java, Fortran, Ruby, Ada, Pascal, SQL, and Bash scripting. Supported build systems include GNU (automake), cmake, qmake, and make for custom projects (KDevelop does not destroy user Makefiles if they are used) and scripting projects which don't need one.

Code completion is available for C and C++. Symbols are kept in a Berkeley DB file for quick lookups without re-parsing. KDevelop also offers a developer framework which helps to write new parsers for other programming languages.

An integrated debugger allows graphically doing all debugging with breakpoints and backtraces. It even works with dynamically loaded plugins unlike command line GDB.

Quick Open allows quick navigation between files.

Currently, around 50 to 100 plugins exist for this IDE. Major ones include persistent project-wide code bookmarks, Code abbreviations which allow expanding text quickly, a Source formatter which reformats code to a style guide before saving, Regular expressions search, and project-wide search/replace which helps in refactoring code.

See also

Further reading

References

  1. ↑ "KDevelop – News of 1999". KDE. 1999-12-06. Archived from the original on 2011-06-07. Retrieved 2012-12-27.
  2. ↑ "extragear-kdevelop". KDE Localization. Retrieved 2013-09-22.
  3. ↑ https://www.kdevelop.org/news/kdevelop-470-released
  4. ↑ harryF (2008-04-10). "KDevelop Team Meeting Agenda". KDE. KDE.NEWS.
  5. ↑ Danny Allen, Artur Souza, Claudia Rauch, Torsten Thelke. KDE e.V. Quarterly Report 2009Q2-2010Q1 (Issue 13). KDE e.V. p. 2. Retrieved 2011-04-09.
  6. ↑ Dominik Haumann (2010-03-08). "Kate, KDevelop and Okteta Developers Meet in Berlin". KDE. KDE.NEWS.
  7. ↑ Milian Wolff (December 12, 2012). "Kate/KDevelop October Sprint: What's new in KDevelop". KDE. KDE.NEWS.
  8. ↑ "ANNOUNCE: kdevelop-0.1.tar.gz". KDE. 1998-09-22. Retrieved 2013-09-22.
  9. ↑ "A new IDE for a new millennium". KDE. 2001-03-30. Retrieved 2013-09-22.
  10. ↑ "KDevelop4 moved". Retrieved 29 November 2009.
  11. ↑ "Finally KDevelop 4.0 final published". 1 May 2010. Retrieved 2010-05-01.
  12. ↑ "KDevelop master now depends on KDE Frameworks 5!".
  13. ↑ "KDevelop 4.7.0 Released".

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to KDevelop.