I've recently been thinking there are certain limitations with MS Dev Studio (6.0), that have been getting to me, and I've been thinking maybe it's time to switch IDEs. Since CodeBlocks is the other suggested IDE for people making OP2 missions around here I thought I'd give that a bit of a try first.
So far, CodeBlocks has been far from confidence building. I loaded it up, and tried to explore some options, and within minutes I had gotten it to crash. I believe I was checking into the SVN plugin, and it crashed when I removed the exe name "SVN.exe" and clicked ok. (Didn't have SVN installed on that computer, and it'd give an error message when starting up CodeBlocks).
I've also noticed that under Tools->Configure Tools, the "Move Down" button is not the same size as the rest. Quite a glaring graphical error.
Anyways, after some work I got it configured to use the MSVC compiler, which took a bit of work since it wasn't detected. I guess they only detect the free toolkit install, and not the real thing? Well, whatever, that was a one time thing, and it didn't turn out to be too bad once I read a few obvious things other people had posted on similar issues. I should note however, that not all the compiler options listed are valid for the compiler that ships with MSVC 6.0. You'll get errors if you try to set them.
The most annoying part of the compiler setup, is it lets you select which compiler to use as default for new projects, but whatever I do, it never seems to default to anything other than GCC, even though it tells me the MSVC compiler is the default one. I have to set this everytime I create a new project.
Another issue I had was the load time. I found I was able to reduce the load time from about 7 seconds on my computer down to about 3 seconds by removing some of the plugins. I don't mean just disabling them either. If you just disable them, it still seems to take about just as long when scanning for them. I had to actually move the plugins to a seperate backup folder to reduce the load time. I did something similar with some of the lexers I knew I'd never use too. While I was at it, I also cleared out some of the useless project options that I knew I'd never make use of. Much less cluttered looking after that.
Just be careful though, since you can't just remove any DLL from the plugin folder. If you remove "compilergcc.dll" from that folder then CodeBlocks crashes when you try to save a project. I also got weird errors when trying to load a project that had the GCC compiler (erroneously) set as default. Guess I was just hoping the GCC default/option would die and leave me alone. No such luck.
After moving the plugins I also found that the build toolbar button no longer works. I tried replacing a few plugin DLLs, but it's still not working. It's lit up like it's clickable, but nothing happens. The Build option from the menu still works though, so it's just the toolbar button that's not working. The other buttons, such as Save still work though.
So, what do other people think of CodeBlocks? Are other people having similar or other issues with it?
Edit: Nope, restoring all the plugins won't re-enable the build button. No idea how to get it back now. Also, why is "Clear History" the first option under the Reopen submenu? Makes it a little too easy to click by accident. I've also noticed that "Rename Project" does all of nothing for me.
