Linux development can take many forms, however, the tools we use by and large remain the same. Here we list some of the best open source development tools that Linux users should be looking at (if not using) today.
Linux Development Utilities
Code::Blocks is an open source cross platform IDE for Windows, Linux and Mac platforms. Code::Blocks has been designed with the aim to make it highly expendable and configurable. It supports multiple compilers like GCC (MingW / GNU GCC), Microsoft VC++, Digital Mars, Borland C++.
Quanta Plus is a popular and feature rich web development environment. It supports both WYSIWYG designing and hand coding.
Aptana studio is a feature rich IDE for Web 2.0 development. It is open source, free and is available either as a standalone application or as an Eclipse plug-in. It has useful features like code assist, source control, works with local or remote SQL databases and Ajax libraries.
Anjuta is a Gnome IDE for C and C++. It features project management, syntax highlighting etc. It’s advanced but easy to learn user interface is also customizable. It can be extended with Plug-ins and its source editor sports many advanced features.
Bluefish is a code editor for programmers and web designers. It has support for many programming and markup languages. It is lightweight and fast and at the same time can handle multiple documents simultaneously with ease.
TortoiseCVS is an open source CVS tool. TortoiseCVS lets you directly check out modules and perform operations like update or commit just by right clicking on files from within windows explorer. It also lets you perform other tasks such as tagging, merging.
phpdoc is an open sources auto-documentation tool for PHP. phpdoc can be used from the command line or from a web interface. It can generate customizable output with smarty based templates and output files in various formats like HTML, PDF, CHM.
RadRails is a feature rich IDE for Ruby and Ruby on Rails frameworks. It is free and open source and has features like code assist on Ruby and RHTML, integrated server views, supports for debugging and dynamic testing etc. RadRails is available as a plug-in for Aptana Studio.
jEdit is a free and open source text editor for programmers. It is cross platform and has features like easy to manage plug-in support, unlimited undo/redo, syntax highlighting for more than 130 file types, various commands for easy source code editing and useful file management features.
KDevelop is a cross platform open source IDE for C/C++ and other programming languages. It has a plug-in based architecture that makes it possible to add new functionality with ease, various project management features and integrated debugger.
Linux Development Utilities (Cont.)
ArgoUML is an open source UML modeling application. It support all 9 UML 1.4 diagrams and has features such as XML support, export diagrams in several formats - gif, png, svg etc. Advanced diagram editing, OCL support etc. It is available in 10 languages.
OpenSTA is an open source web server benchmarking tool capable of performing scripted HTTP and HTTPS heavy load tests.
Gambas is a development environment that is based on a Basic interpreter with object extensions. It is often referred to as the Visual Basic for Linux due to the similarity between the two. Gambas enables you to quickly design graphical interfaces with Qt or Gtk+. It uses various databases including MySql and PostgreSQL.
PHPUnit is a unit testing framework (member of the xUnit family of testing frameworks) for PHP. It has support for mock objects, database testing ports, code coverage analysis, incomplete tests and project mess detection.
Dia is an open source diagram creation tool based on gtk+. Dia features special objects to draw E-R diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts and many other kinds of diagrams. It also supports the addition of new shapes by writing XML files and can load and save diagrams to custom XML format.
NetBeans is an open source integrated development environment (IDE) that runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and Solaris. It’s a popular IDE for developing desktop, web and mobile applications with various languages like C/C++, Java, PHP, Ruby etc.
Eclipse is probably the most popular free and open source software development platform. The Eclipse IDE is extensible with plug-ins and the availability of numerous plug-ins is one of the main reasons for its popularity. Eclipse is widely used in development projects using Java, C, C++, Python, PHP, Perl etc.
XAMPP is an open source web server package consisting of Apache (HTTP Server), MySql (database), and interpreters for PHP, Perl languages. XAMPP is available for Windows, Linux, Solaris and Mac OS X. The main advantage of using a web server package like XAMPP is that it makes it easier to set up your web development environment by installing just a single package rather than installing and configuring each and every component separately.
MonoDevelop is an open source IDE for Linux application development using the Mono platform. With MonoDevelop you can develop desktop and ASP.NET web applications on Linux and port .NET applications created with Microsoft Visual Studio to Linux.
Amaya is an open source web editor with browsing features. It houses integrated editing features that let you edit documents directly on the web.
Glade is a user interface designer tool for the Gtk+ toolkit and Gnome desktop. Glade saves the interface designed with it as XML by using libglade library, which enables several programming languages such as C/C++, java, Python, C# etc, to use them.
