So I want to start developing for Linux [help!]

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ivan141
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So I want to start developing for Linux [help!]

Post by ivan141 »

Between fixing up 2 cars, finishing off my RGB dash PCB + code and looking for a new house before I'm rendered homeless I have taken it upon myself
to help out the company I work for with an (unpayed) promotional project (building an electric car out of a Citroen 2CV based piece of shit for a contest).

I'm looking to make a dashboard that will run on a raspberry pi, the reasons for this are many:
-It's cheap.
-It's powerfull enough.
-It's something I wanted to learn about anyway.

Problem is I have been connected to Windows with an umbical cord about all my life, and I have no clue where to get started with Linux.

-What options are there for creating graphical interfaces (Glade \ Eclipse \ Netbeans \ Qt)?
Out of all those I am only familiar with Qt (have made widgets for a SCADA program based on Qt).
Bear in mind I only know C/C++ (no expert, but not a newbie either), C#, and a tiny bit of Java.

-What in the name of all that is holy is a toolchain?

Long story made short: where does one start?
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Fred
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Re: So I want to start developing for Linux [help!]

Post by Fred »

Got skype? If so we can have a chat about this :-)

GTK or QT or WXWidgets or Java (swing, swt, qt, wx, etc) or raw X11 and likely others.

Which lang do you want?

I prefer to code independently of the OS. For that QT and Java are best choices IMO.

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ivan141
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Re: So I want to start developing for Linux [help!]

Post by ivan141 »

Would love to chat sometime so I'll take you up on that offer.
I'll have to dig my skype login out from underneath a pile of dust though. My GF is logged into Skype 24/7 at the moment (she moved here from serbia a year ago).

As far as coding goes, I'm most proficient in C-based languages, but I'll admit that some of the more abstract C++ code can make my head spin at times.
That would be the kind you find in the embedded world usually, funny how different a language can look depending on the purpose it is used for.
The stuff I'm used to coding in all week (visual studio, SCADA and PLC) is pretty much useless to me here.
Java I've only ported programs from to C#, meaning I know how to read it well enough and don't expect much problems adapting to coding in it either.
For the rest.. I'm all ears.

I know Qt is pretty powerful for creating UI stuff like widgets and whatnot, but then I take a look at stuff like XBMC and get the feeling there is a lot
more to learn out there.
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Re: So I want to start developing for Linux [help!]

Post by malcom2073 »

ivan141 wrote:I know Qt is pretty powerful for creating UI stuff like widgets and whatnot, but then I take a look at stuff like XBMC and get the feeling there is a lot
more to learn out there.
Take a look at QML. It's an opengl semi-3d fluid based GUI that uses Qtscript and has direct Qt object interactions. You can do pretty much everything XBMC can, in QML. I use Qt for the EMStudio tuning application, and use QML for the user-interface in my in-car media pc.

I also plan on using the raspberry pi, or something similar, to display gauges and the like. Most likely using Qt/QML.
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Re: So I want to start developing for Linux [help!]

Post by Fred »

C# + mono is another option :-)

C# and Java are pretty similar for the most part IMO. C# has some nice syntax sugar that Java doesn't, but the sun VM is FTW IMO.
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Re: So I want to start developing for Linux [help!]

Post by ivan141 »

Quick update on this:

I've been nosing around Qt and Eclipse. I like what I see in Qt (QML UI's are pretty neat). Getting things to
work in Eclipse is a different matter altogether. I somehow think getting QML to work in any editor other than
Qt Creator is going to be more challenging than necessary. If anyone knows better, let me know, because I
really miss a couple of basic features in Qt Creator.

Now I need to proceed with cross-compilation testing because I don't feel like setting up a linux VM just to be
able to code for the raspberry.
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Fred
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Re: So I want to start developing for Linux [help!]

Post by Fred »

Linux VM? You're not running Linux on any machines? :-/ You're the odd one out here :-)
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Re: So I want to start developing for Linux [help!]

Post by malcom2073 »

ivan141 wrote:Quick update on this:

I've been nosing around Qt and Eclipse. I like what I see in Qt (QML UI's are pretty neat). Getting things to
work in Eclipse is a different matter altogether. I somehow think getting QML to work in any editor other than
Qt Creator is going to be more challenging than necessary. If anyone knows better, let me know, because I
really miss a couple of basic features in Qt Creator.

Now I need to proceed with cross-compilation testing because I don't feel like setting up a linux VM just to be
able to code for the raspberry.
I don't honestly know anyone who codes for C++/Qt in Eclipse, so I can't much help you. You could always code C++ in Eclipse, and the QML in Qt Creator. QML is very loosely coupled to the C++ behind it, so it wouldn't be a huge hassle to split it between two editors if you're really that locked in on Eclipse.
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Re: So I want to start developing for Linux [help!]

Post by Fred »

I just installed QT creator and to be fair, it looks decent. Give it a try :-)
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ivan141
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Re: So I want to start developing for Linux [help!]

Post by ivan141 »

I just never got into the swing of things in Linux, tried it for a while on an EEEpc years ago and
got annoyed with having to find applications for it so reverted to Windows.
But never mind that, I realise I'm a minority in here, that's why I posted my call for help here in the first place.

I'm not stuck on Eclipse at all (in fact I have never used it before), but I have used visual studio with a Qt plugin
before and was looking for something non-microsoft that could do the same thing. Qt Creator is not that bad, but
you just get used to some functionalities like finding all references to a var/func from it's context menu.

I just noticed the QML designer in Qt creator.. that makes things even more appealing. Sadly there is no Qt Quick 2 support
for this visual designer yet, hope they incorporate that into the stable release of Qt5 that they promise to deliver later this year.
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