Apple’s Xcode development system is superb for developing applications, but sometimes you just want to write C or C++ code for research or school. Composing a serious chunk of code with vi is no longer acceptable,* so users in this frame of mind are now using Eclipse, a modern IDE, that’s also free. Here’s how to get gcc without installing Apple’s Xcode and then install Eclipse for C/C++ programming. What’s the Motivation? At work recently, my wife was chatting with a colleague who was taking his first C++ class. She taught him how to use Eclipse on a Mac, even though he resisted at first. In June 2016 the Eclipse 4.6 (Neon) version was released. Please check the appendix of this tutorial for these shortcuts or open Window+Preferences. You can store JAR files directly in your project, and add them to the classpath which the Java compiler of Eclipse is using. An IDE for C/C++ developers with Mylyn integration. However, later, he came back and commented that the other students were trying to manage ever increasingly complex projects with the vi editor. It was taking them four, six, or even 20 hours in some cases to complete their homework each week. He finished his, typically, in 30 minutes. That’s the power of an IDE with a modern debugger. Service pack 1 fsx. That last item, the debugger, can’t be emphasized enough. Print statements in your code are oh, so yesteryear with a tool like this. Time is money, and efficiency reflects on you as a programmer. So if you’re a scientist, researcher or engineer who wants to write some research code, not intended as a GUI app, in Java, C, C++ or Fortran, you need to dump vi as an editor* (or Emacs or Nedit or whatever) immediately and get with this kind of IDE. Things are moving far too fast nowadays not to make this important move. (Clearly, I’m speaking to an older crowd here.**) To be perfectly clear, Apple’s Xcode is a fabulous development system for C, C++, Objective-C and even Fortran 77***. You can build native OS X and iOS apps. But many researchers and scientists aren’t interested in Xcode. They’ve come from a Linux or other UNIX platform, like IBM’s AIX, and they just want to carry on their research in Eclipse on a Mac. This how-to is primarily for them. But, as I mentioned above, students who are taking their first programming class and own a Mac will also find this discussion useful — indeed mandatory. Remember, this is an introduction to whet your appetite and get you launched, not a complete Eclipse tutorial. Also, this how-to for the sake of simplicity focuses on C/C++, but Eclipse can handle a myriad of languages, including, but not limited to, Java and Fortran. Let’s start with C/C++. Getting the gcc Compiler As an aside, when you install Apple’s Xcode (free from the Mac App Store only in Lion), gcc is automatically installed in /usr/bin. But if you have a mind to work with just Eclipse and gcc, you’ll need a way to install gcc without, if it pleases you, installing Apple’s Xcode first. (For reference, ) There are at least two places I know of where you can get a gcc installer package for OS X: • • managed by Dr. Gaurav Khanna at the University of Mass.
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