Eclipse Helios IDE C/C++ my views...

[3pj6b7Xj]

I just downloaded this thing, just because I was curious...wow! That is all I can say. However, as far as it goes being user-friendly (big thumbs down). It did not require installation, just unzip to a directory and start Eclipse and it runs, I did notice it was making heavy use of Java so my best bet is Eclipse is itself a Java application, altho I could be wrong but the directory structure seems to say so.

I wrote a simple C++ program...

#include <iostream>

using std::cout;

int main()
{
    for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++)
    {
        cout << "counting: " << i << endl;
    }

    return 0;
}

I then attempted to run it and it failed completely, lol. Eclipse complained that the file was not specified in the launch configuration...come on man, am I launching the space shuttle here or something? Do I have to purchase rocket fuel and have people stading by on mission control to get this thing to work?

I then poked around some more and created a lame windows program...

#include <windows.h>

int WINAPI WinMain
(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrev, LPSTR szArgs, int iWinState)
{
   return MessageBox(NULL,"Hello there!","Message",MB_OK);
}

Attempting to compile this resulted in a hydrazine leak that required the launch to be scrubbed, LOL! Ok, seriously, it didn't work but of course it wouldn't work, it doesn't even know were to find windows.h to begin with.

I even looked around some more and notice that the C++ compiler was no were to be found, so Eclipse does work, it just doesn't know were to find what its looking for. You have to baby this thing and give it all it needs or it will cry all night long.

For the windows development, which is what I was aiming for I needed to installl the MingWin development kit from their site, that seems rather simple but that is as far as I went.

It would be nice however, if someone out there packaged this thing and made it work out of the box but Eclipse having so much support for all different sorts of things, hey, why should I complain any longer, its free after all!

Any feedback/comments are welcome, thanks guys. I'll stick with my Code::Blocks for now, happy programming.

Best;
Rafael