[Beowulf] Re: Religious wars

[Perry E. Metzger]

Jim Lux <James.P.Lux at jpl.nasa.gov> writes:
>> > Line numbers are handy when you get that
>> >
>> > "syntax error in line 34 of file xyz.c"
>> >
>> > too..
>>
>>Both emacs and vi will display line numbers if you ask them.
>>
>>Emacs has a really nice compile mode where it will compile in a second
>>window, and jump right to every line in the source files that caused
>>an error in sequence as you ask it. (It even accounts for line changes
>>because of edits.) BSD Unix has a command called "error" that does
>>something similar for you if you are using vi. (I don't know why it
>>doesn't seem to be in most Linuxes, but it is open source and trivially
>>ported.)
>>
>>Thanks to such tools, no one with a real editor need ever find lines
>>with problems by hand, which means that although both editors will
>>show you line numbers, you don't really need them.
>
>
> A lot of "lightweight" non-IDE development environments for embedded
> systems tend not to provide this, particularly if you're using some
> form of cross compiler/cross assembler.  Sometimes, you're thankful
> that you have a compiler at all, much less whether it happens to be
> well integrated with an editor.

Emacs and vi both handle the cross case pretty well. The "editor
integration" all takes place via parsing the compiler's stdout -- it
isn't difficult to make work for almost any case.

> And, of course, "open source and trivially ported" still means there's
> non-zero work in getting it working.

If you're a developer, you know how to type "make" already pretty
well. error(1) is stock C. If someone is desperate for a copy that
will compile for normal Linuxes, though, I can make one available.

-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry at piermont.com