BITPROX Development Environment 1.0
The first (that I'm aware of) commercial IDE specifically for D has officially been released in version 1.0 form. According to the website, it only supports development with D2 (and specifically mentions support for DMD 2.046). You can download 10-day trial versions for both Windows and Linux to decide if you like it or not. A single-user license costs, currently, $239. If anyone has any feedback, specifically on how it compares to something like VisualD, I'd love to hear it.
Visual D 0.3.9
Rainer has announced a new release of Visual D, the Visual Studio plugin for D. He's actually put out a few releases since his original announcement, with incremental updates in each. For the latest features, see the project page at DSource.
Installing Visual D Without Buying Visual Studio
I haven't owned a copy of Visual Studio since VS 6.0. I've kept one version or another of the Express edition installed for those occasions when I needed to view some VS project files, but I haven't used it for any development. I've been using Crimson Editor for most of my C work and everything I do with D. So when Visual D was recently announced, I was eager to try it out, but with VS Express unable to use plugins, I wasn't willing to fork out the dough for the commercial version. Then I saw a conversation in the D newsgroups that led to a solution. And it works like a charm.
If, like me, you're on Windows and want to try Visual D (which I highly recommend you do) without purchasing Visual Studio, just follow these steps.
- Download and install the Visual Studio 2008 Shell (integrated mode) Redistributable Package.
- In the directory in which you installed ("C:\VS 2008 Shell Redist" by default) execute "Integrated Mode\vs.xxx.exe" (where xxx represents the language you selected on the download page).
- Download and install Visual D.
- For debugging support, download cv2pdb and extract the archive into the directory where you installed Visual D.
Now you should be ready to roll.
However, the integrated version of the shell takes advantage of any VS tools you already have installed (such as Spy++, the GUID creator, etc...). At the moment I'm not clear if you need to have Visual C++ Express installed for debugging. I assume yes, but I could be wrong. I already had the 2008 Express version installed before I installed the shell, so if anyone without it can confirm if it's needed I'd love to know.
Visual D
Rainer Schuetze has taken the D community by surprise with the announcement of Visual D, a plugin for Visual Studio that's actually coded in D. From the announcement:
* Project management
o all DMD command line options accessible
o support for resource compiler
o custom build commands
o pre/post custom build steps
o automatic dependency generation
o automatic link between dependent projects
o integrates cv2pdb for seamless debugger integration
o new project templates* Language Service
o syntax highlighting
o simple word-completion
o import statement completion
o goto definition (using JSON file from compilation)
o smart indentation
o highlight/jump-to matching braces
o code snippets* Supported Visual Studio versions
o VS 2005, VS 2008
o with some limitations: VS.NET 2003, VS 2010* Easy installer for hassle-free installation
He says the project is still quite young, so it you can likely expect it to be a bit quirky yet. Now I understand the motivation behind his cv2pdb project.
D-IDE
IIRC, I saw an announcement some time ago about D-IDE, but never got around to posting about it here on the blog. I was recently reminded of the project, so I've added a link to it in the right sidebar, under the D Programming heading. If you are one of those people who hasn't found an IDE for D that you feel at home with, this is one more you might try if you haven't already.
I have no recommendations or criticisms of it, as I haven't tried it yet myself in its current state. So you have something to say about it, the comments section below would be a great place for that!
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