Installation glitches & lack of error messages
Posted: Sat Mar 26, 2011 5:13 pm
Code: Select all
Hello Eran and other Developers,
Thanks very much for CodeLite - I am looking forward to using it
for C++ on Linux.
Here is my experience as a complete newbie installing CodeLite
and getting a successful executable according to the
instructions, including:
http://codelite.org/LiteEditor/QuickStart
This may help other newbies and may enable you to alter the
program or the documentation to avoid some of the problems I
encountered
My machine is a P4 freshly installed with 64 bit Debian 6.0
squeeze. I don't recall what I selected when I installed it,
but I didn't request that GCC and other development tools be
installed.
After an evening researching "IDE Linux C++" I tentatively
concluded that Code::Blocks and CodeLite were the most promising
of the FOS IDEs - since I surmised that Eclipse's support for
C++ was not very strong, and was probably not very specific to
C++ on Linux.
Since CodeLite was available from Synaptic, I installed it
(2.6.0.4189) together with the required package
"codelite-plugins". Here is the list of packages which I
needed to install with CodeLite:
binutils 2.20.1-16
codelite 2.6.0.4189~dfsg-1
codelite-plugins 2.6.0.4189~dfsg-1
g++ 4:4.4.5-1
g++-4.4 4.4.5-8
gcc 4:4.4.5-1
gcc-4.4 4.4.5-8
gdb 7.0.1-2+b1
gdbserver 7.0.1-2+b1
libc-dev-bin 2.11.2-10
libc6-dev 2.11.2-10
libstdc++6-4.4-dev 4.4.5-8
linux-libc-dev 2.6.32-31
manpages-dev 3.27-1
qt4-qmake 4:4.6.3-4
wx-common 2.8.10.1-3+b1
CodeLite appeared in the Gnome "Applications > Programming"
menu, and I ran it. Codelite told me I should download a
later version. This fired up Epiphany, which crashed for
some unknown reason. I tried a few times, and eventually
got it to run and download a single .deb file. I tried
installing this with:
dpkg -i codelite_2.9.0.4684-ubuntu0_amd64.deb
This failed due to the presence of the codelite-plugins
package. I wondered if I should have downloaded a new
version of this package, but since I couldn't find one, I
used Synaptic to remove it. Then I could install the
2.9.0.4684 version. I later found that it included a
bunch of plugins, so I guess there is no longer a separate
plugins package.
So now I thought I was ready to rumble . . .
I followed the QuickStart instructions exactly and after
adding my own text in line 37 of baz_frame.cpp I proceeded to
"Build > Build project".
In the bottom right window I got a nice green "Build ended
successfully" message. I tried "Build > Run" and there was an
error due to the executable not existing. Sure enough, there
was no executable file.
At this point, it is possible that I and other newbies could
become seriously stuck.
Thanks to this forum, I found a message:
Viewing compiler output
http://codelite.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1234
in which you instructed the original poster:
You need to "unlink" between the two views: the
"Errors" and the "Build" views. To unlink them:
Navigate to:
Settings | Build Settings | Build Output Appearance
and un-tick the option "Always show the error pane
after build"
I did this and retried "Build > Rebuild project".
Now I could see an error message - there was no "make"
program . . .
I used Synaptic to install make 3.81-3 and rebuilt the
project again. This lead to more action, but a bunch of
errors which I figured were due to missing wxwidgets
header files. Without too much thought, I searched for
"wxw" in Synaptic and found that I had these (and perhaps
others) installed:
libwxtgt2.8-0 2.8.10.1-3+b1
wx-common 2.8.10.1-3+b1
Without much detailed knowledge of header files and the
like, I decided to install:
libwxbase2.8dev
wx2.8-headers
The result was the following packages:
wx-common 2.8.10.1-3+b1
wx2.8-headers 2.8.10.1-3+b1
libwxtgt2.8-0 2.8.10.1-3+b1
libwxtgt2.8-0-dev 2.8.10.1-3+b1
libwxbase2.8 2.8.10.1-3+b1
libwxbase2.8dev 2.8.10.1-3+b1
Now I almost succeeded - "Build > Rebuild project" worked
without errors.
However, I couldn't use "Build > Run" because it was greyed
out. I eventually used "Build > Stop" and then I could use
"Build > Run". A text window appeared and spawned a bare-
bones GUI-style application window, with my own personal
text in the bottom bar.
These headaches are typical when using a program for the
first time. Perhaps if you alter package dependencies and
make the error messages always visible by default, other
newbies might have a smoother time learning how to use
CodeLite.
BTW, in the Forum text of terms and conditions, the name
of the forum was missing, and the confirmation email was
titled: Welcome to ""
Cheers - Robin