Hi,

I have used several years kdevelop 3.5 and was quite happy with it.
The projects were big c++ projects using autoconf/automake. With kdevelop 3.5 , I was able to create the code of course, to debug it and to navigate easely into classes and files.

Now it seems not to be possible to install kdevelop 3.5 on ubuntu 11.10, so I tried (one more time) to use kdevelop 4.2.3.
Now, I use it regurlarly since one month on linux kubuntu and xubuntu.

I'm very disappointed because a lot of things have changed or have disappear, and, for my opinion, were better before. Perhaps it is my fault / I use it badly, that's why I make this post, not to complain against kdevelop etc ... There are good things too in kdevelop 4.x too, for example, completion works better than with 3.5.

gdb:
It seems it is not possible to debug the application. When I try to put some breakpoints or to inspect variables, the debug view disappears. After that, there is no way to access the process. (May be kdevelop does not handle correctly some signals?)
Using gdb or even kdbg externally is working well "out of the box".

find / replace files :
Only the last search is accessible. With kdevelop 3.5, find results were organized in tabs, so it was possible to look into a previous search. This is very - very annoying, in particular when working with code written by other developpers. => Any way to see previous searches ?

cpp / hpp headers :
kdevelop seems to have difficulties to switch beetween .h and .cpp. I remember an useful option in kdevelop 3.5 switch to header file or switch to "code" file (sorry I do not remember the correct terminology)
How to do the same (kdevelop 4 seems to be lost and often suggests to create existing methods declarations)

file tabs / file navigation :
The default font is too big - and the tooltip in the code view is not very practical : Files aren't sorted alphabetically. Ok there is the document view, but it would be great if the font was smaller in the tabs or if kdevelop tries to put more tabs by shortening the file name.

Refresh :
The core used to refresh the display seems to be very "heavy" : I use frequently no-machine on a adsl connection to connect to my work. Previously with kdevelop 3.5, it was working great - no refresh, scrolling was very fluent. Now with kdevelop 4.x (and kate too), the screen is constantly refreshing, making it very difficult to work with. Is there a way to avoid those "refreshs" ?

Well, If someone has some ideas to help me working better with kdevelop. Shade, I liked kdevelop 3.5, but I now wonder to switch or not to another IDE.

Thanks in advance,
sym39

For the refresh problem, try starting KDevelop with another style such as Plastique, as Oxygen has been known to not be friendly to remote connections.

Code: Select all

kdevelop -style plastique

Also, you may wish to evaluate the use of SPICE instead of NX - changes in Qt, particularly 4.8 have made it necessary to use the "raster" backend by default - and it also does not play well with remote connections.

SPICE works in a different way to NX and so therefore should work better, even with the raster Qt backend.

Hi,

sym39 wrote:It seems it is not possible to debug the application. When I try to put some breakpoints or to inspect variables, the debug view disappears. After that, there is no way to access the process. (May be kdevelop does not handle correctly some signals?)
Using gdb or even kdbg externally is working well "out of the box".

This should work. Is the project you're trying to debug open source? Maybe something triggers a bug there.

sym39 wrote:Only the last search is accessible. With kdevelop 3.5, find results were organized in tabs, so it was possible to look into a previous search. This is very - very annoying, in particular when working with code written by other developpers. => Any way to see previous searches ?

I'm using master, there's a dropdown list of all recent searches there:

Maybe this is not in 4.2, it's quite old. 4.3 will be released in just a few days, I suggest you wait until then.

sym39 wrote:kdevelop seems to have difficulties to switch beetween .h and .cpp. I remember an useful option in kdevelop 3.5 switch to header file or switch to "code" file (sorry I do not remember the correct terminology)
How to do the same (kdevelop 4 seems to be lost and often suggests to create existing methods declarations)

Ctrl+Shift+C switches between header/source files without problems for me. Doesn't this work in your case?

sym39 wrote:file tabs / file navigation :
The default font is too big - and the tooltip in the code view is not very practical : Files aren't sorted alphabetically. Ok there is the document view, but it would be great if the font was smaller in the tabs or if kdevelop tries to put more tabs by shortening the file name.

"Tooltip in the code view"? Which one do you mean?
For the tabs, I agree. I often find myself just using quickopen to switch between files.

sym39 wrote:Refresh :
The core used to refresh the display seems to be very "heavy" : I use frequently no-machine on a adsl connection to connect to my work. Previously with kdevelop 3.5, it was working great - no refresh, scrolling was very fluent. Now with kdevelop 4.x (and kate too), the screen is constantly refreshing, making it very difficult to work with. Is there a way to avoid those "refreshs" ?

There was recently someone on IRC with the same issue. As far as I remember, switching the Qt graphics backend improved the situation... I don't remember the details, tough. You maybe want to try different "-graphicssystem <foo>" options and see if any of those is faster.

Also, a general note: Make sure that you got your include paths configured correctly, this means, watch out for #include statements which kdevelop underlines in red. If you find any of those, use the assistant which is provided in the tooltip to add the correct include paths for those files. This is vital for everything else (completion, implement method helpers, ...) to work correctly.

Greetings

bcooksley wrote:For the refresh problem, try starting KDevelop with another style such as Plastique, as Oxygen has been known to not be friendly to remote connections.

Code: Select all

kdevelop -style plastique

Also, you may wish to evaluate the use of SPICE instead of NX - changes in Qt, particularly 4.8 have made it necessary to use the "raster" backend by default - and it also does not play well with remote connections.

SPICE works in a different way to NX and so therefore should work better, even with the raster Qt backend.

bcooksley, thank you for your reply.

I just have tried the

Code: Select all

kdevelop -style plastique

. I do not see a lot of changes.

For SPICE, ok, I can try it, at least to know it. But it is not a good solution for me I think.

scummos wrote:This should work. Is the project you're trying to debug open source? Maybe something triggers a bug there.

No, it is not open source - Shade I just try to build a simplified version of the program but I can debug this one without problems. I will make additionnal tests next time I encounter this problem.

scummos wrote:I'm using master, there's a dropdown list of all recent searches there:
Maybe this is not in 4.2, it's quite old. 4.3 will be released in just a few days, I suggest you wait until then.

Apparently, it is not in 4.2. Good news if it's in 4.3. Really essential!

scummos wrote:Ctrl+Shift+C switches between header/source files without problems for me. Doesn't this work in your case?

Yes this works - However, I'm not able to find it in in the menus/contextual menus

scummos wrote:"Tooltip in the code view"? Which one do you mean?

Sorry I'm not clear, look at the tabs review/debug/code in the top/righ of kdevelop. There is what is called "a working set". When you move the mouse over it, it is possible to see all opened files in yellow. But I find it not very practical; If the files were sorted alphabetically, like what was done in the kdevelop 3.5 window menu, it would be easier to locate faster a file.

scummos wrote:For the tabs, I agree. I often find myself just using quickopen to switch between files.

Ok

scummos wrote:There was recently someone on IRC with the same issue. As far as I remember, switching the Qt graphics backend improved the situation... I don't remember the details, tough. You maybe want to try different "-graphicssystem <foo>" options and see if any of those is faster.

I just try starting kdevelop -graphicssystem raster with NX. There's still a lot of refresh - very difficult to work with kdevelop with such refreshs.

scummos wrote:Also, a general note: Make sure that you got your include paths configured correctly, this means, watch out for #include statements which kdevelop underlines in red. If you find any of those, use the assistant which is provided in the tooltip to add the correct include paths for those files. This is vital for everything else (completion, implement method helpers, ...) to work correctly.

OK - you're right, I have to correct this.

Thanks for your reply,
sym39

Please report bugs to bugs.kde.org, such as that files should be sorted in the working set tooltip. Right now it follows the tab-order.

Regarding switching header/implementation, the action is called "switch declaration/definition" in the navigation menu. In the context menu you'll find "jump to declaration" or "jump to definition".

Regarding fonts: You can define a smaller font in systemsettings.

Regarding tabs: Shortening filenames is not worth it as you easily end up with undistinguishable file names (e.g. foolong.h foolong.cpp both end up being foo... or similar). There is a wealth of alternatives you can use to navigate your opened documents, like the document toolview, quickopen and - very importantly - the "recent document switcher", CTRL [+ SHIFT] + TAB.

Regarding remote KDevelop: This is not something we focus on, and we won't spent time on it. Patches to kate or similar that improve painting performance is of course welcome. Oh and make sure you read https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=293587.

Milian Wolff wrote:Please report bugs to bugs.kde.org, such as that files should be sorted in the working set tooltip. Right now it follows the tab-order.

Ok, so not really a bug but a possible enhancement at least for me.

Milian Wolff wrote:Regarding switching header/implementation, the action is called "switch declaration/definition" in the navigation menu. In the context menu you'll find "jump to declaration" or "jump to definition".

Ok I got it

Milian Wolff wrote:Regarding fonts: You can define a smaller font in systemsettings.

Regarding tabs: Shortening filenames is not worth it as you easily end up with undistinguishable file names (e.g. foolong.h foolong.cpp both end up being foo... or similar). There is a wealth of alternatives you can use to navigate your opened documents, like the document toolview, quickopen and - very importantly - the "recent document switcher", CTRL [+ SHIFT] + TAB.

OK, CTRL TAB remembers me an old live with VC6 ... great

Milian Wolff wrote:Regarding remote KDevelop: This is not something we focus on, and we won't spent time on it. Patches to kate or similar that improve painting performance is of course welcome. Oh and make sure you read https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=293587.

-graphicssystem native works well for me

Thanks very much,
sym39

gdb:
It seems it is not possible to debug the application. When I try to put some breakpoints or to inspect variables, the debug view disappears. After that, there is no way to access the process. (May be kdevelop does not handle correctly some signals?)
Using gdb or even kdbg externally is working well "out of the box".

We had some problems with debugging in KDevelop when using a custom makescript based build. We since then have tried it with both cmake and premake and both of these produce files that will debug just fine.