Coming Full Circle
At Airbus, I was forced to work with a new IDE — Netbeans — and after a rocky start, I grew to be quite fond of it. And about two months ago, I was ready to let go of my copy of Visual Studio version 2010, the one that I treasured for such a long time. (I once got it for free, when I was a PhD student at university.)
My transition to a new IDE was not that easy. C++ development on Netbeans works like a charm — on Linux. No big deal, one would say. Just get yourself a Linux, as every serious programmer would do. Somehow, I am not a very serious programmer, though. And above all, I am one of the two only people on earth, who really like Windows. Although, I am not quite sure about Bill Gates …
One day, I found out that it is possible to install the gnu compiler on Windows! I decided to give it a go. Sweet summer child! Oh my shit! I have run in every trouble I could possibly find.
First, I had to somehow replace my VS project files, the ones that I had migrated from VS version to VS version since forever. I had already learned how to add some lines to cmake files at Airbus. However, I would not claim that I ever REALLY knew what I was doing. So I learned how to use cmake from scratch. Then I installed minggw — a minimalist gnu for Windows. Then, I found out that the minggw project has kind of stalled, and minggw64 would be the better choice. Not a huge problem. I deinstalled the former, installed the latter. Surprise, it did not work either. At least not with Netbeans. I was successfully compiling my code with the minggw64 gnu, true enough, but unfortunately Netbeans cannot work with the make that comes with minggw64.
I would not yet give up. I deinstalled the thingy, and installed msys2 (I do not really understand what this is for, but it provides a Linux-like environment in Windows, and you can add minggw64 on top…) After a quadzillion tries to create a Netbeans project with some (any) CMakeLists.txt with the right options, and all the right commands, and all the right paths … I finally did it.
Of course I had to fix some errors, because the gnu compiler is a bit more serious about bad coding. But then, finally, I had done it: I had ported my VS project to Netbeans + cmake + gnu-compiler.
Just to find out the next day, that after installing so many things, my Windows weather forecast was for Beijing in CHINA! The ads were in Chinese, too. And Cortana would no longer speak with me. (Not that I regularly speak with Cortana!)
To say, I was in a bad mood, when I found out, is an understatement. My first reaction was the wish to flatten my system and start it from scratch. Then I made a long list of all the software I had to install, and just changed the region settings of Windows back to Germany. (My fingers are crossed!)
On yet another day, when I found out that the python installation of msys2 (I had to put all the msys stuff in the Windows path to make my ugly construction work) did clash with my Anaconda python in some cases, I decided to download MS Visual Studio Community Edition. And there I am. Back at the beginning, somehow. And quite content.
ps: I can’t wait to try the new Window Linux kernel. Spaß! LOL! I guess, some cold winters will have to pass until I find the courage to change something. Then again, I found out that my code compiled with gnu runs so much faster. Hmph!
