Geany vs Eclipse for developing C in large projects

Question

I am trying to find an IDE for C that will give me the same level of comfort with which I am used to programming in Java. I heard good things about Geany (from related questions here from Stack Overflow) and am familiar with Eclipse from my work with Java, and I was wondering what works best for developing Linux (kernel stuff).

In particular, I am interested in the objective opinion with which you have the best (direct) integration with the terminal, and which one is closest to the IDE functions for OO languages ​​such as Java, with a minimum of hassle. Of course, any other relevant comparisons would be welcome.

Answer 1

Use Eclipse, Luke ...

I assumed that I would never give such advice, but Eclipse with CDT is a very good environment, one of the most advanced. You must understand that Geany is just a text editor with some IDE features. And Eclipse is an IDE, yes it’s not such an easy program as Geany, but it has many IDE features: refactoring, code analysis, error detection and code hints. In addition, it integrates easily with many popular profilers.

Just try the CDT - you'll like it.

Answer 2

The real question is: how much do you want your IDE to do for you? Eclipse will do much more than Geany, which can make you more productive or make it more fragile.

Eclipse will impose its own project structure, including placing metadata files in your directories. It will also require that it can successfully build your project (s) before many of its functions work, so you need to make sure that it can find all your dependencies, etc. Basically, it may take more time and effort to get started. However, it has a ton of features.

Geany is a much less intrusive, much faster startup, with excellent text editing capabilities - perhaps better text editing than Eclipse - but a more modest set of programming tools. It works well when you want your builds to be external, such as running make or Maven.

I use Eclipse to run automated tests and to interact with SVN (Geany has a plugin for integrating version control, but it is limited and seems to be buggy). For most things, I prefer Geany.

Answer 3

I personally like Geany because it is so light. But, as Eugene points out, this is not a full-fledged IDE. Its built-in terminal is a standard Linux shell (sh, no fancy bash here). If you don't need all the advanced features of Eclipse, Geany may be an alternative, but if not, go to Eclipse.