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[on:]

Hi, any suggestions for alternative/better IDE's for Arduino ?

Thanks in advance.

[Reply #1 on:]

There are no better IDEs for Arduino. The one provided is perfect. Just ask the Arduino team. That seems to be the standard response to every enhancement request.

On the other hand, if you described what YOU mean by a better IDE, perhaps some more useful suggestions could be proposed.

[Reply #2 on:]

Nothing is perfect. And the current IDE is far from perfect. I just wanted to use a better editor (and program the board from that) and not that awful standard IDE, but probably there's no hope... Thanks.

[Reply #3 on:]

but probably there's no hope...

There's plenty of hope. Some folks use Eclipse and I've been using Netbeans for a while but really I find all those big IDEs are a lot of bloatware, so just recently, in an effort to get back to basics I moved to using Notepad++ for an editor and running a makefile in a dos window.

Notepad++ is a great editor and using a makefile gives you total control over the build process.

Just like the "old" days.

______
Rob

[Reply #4 on:]

Rob,

can you please send me the makefile ?

I like Notepad++ very much, it's my main editor and I think that your arrangement is much better than the standard IDE (I tried, but I don't like it at all).

Thanks in advance,
John

[Reply #5 on:]

IN the file menu choose preferences and select external editor

[Reply #6 on:]

Makefile attached

Note the following.

This works in my environment and I use it to program two different 328-based boards. It's not necessarily robust and I may have broken something in the original file that I don't use.

I just tried it on my Mega and avrdude didn't sync (feel free to fix this )

I haven't used make for about 15 years so my changes may be a little non kosher.

I think it could be cleaned up more, there's a lot of stuff I don't need.

______
Rob

[Reply #7 on:]

In order of my preference

AVR-Project-IDE

Eclipse, Netbeans

Anything using Scintilla

[Reply #8 on:]

I just tried it on my Mega and avrdude didn't sync (feel free to fix this )

I've fixed this, change the part between double ##### lines to this

Code:

##########################################################
##########################################################
# Select processor line here
MCU = atmega328p
#MCU = atmega2560

ifeq ($(MCU),atmega2560)
UPLOAD_RATE = 115200
AVRDUDE_PROGRAMMER = stk500v2
COM = 39
endif

ifeq ($(MCU),atmega328p)
UPLOAD_RATE = 57600
AVRDUDE_PROGRAMMER = stk500v1
COM = 33
endif

ARDUINO_VERSION = 21
PROJECT_NAME = quubmon_client
PROJECT_DIR = d:/work/quubmon/client
ARDUINO_DIR = c:/progra~1/arduino/arduino-00$(ARDUINO_VERSION)
ARDUINO_CORE = $(ARDUINO_DIR)/hardware/arduino/cores/arduino
ARDUINO_AVR =    $(ARDUINO_DIR)/hardware/tools/avr/avr/include/avr
ARDUINO_LIB = $(ARDUINO_DIR)/libraries
AVRDUDE_PATH = $(ARDUINO_DIR)/hardware/tools/avr/bin
AVRDUDECONFIG_PATH = $(ARDUINO_DIR)/hardware/tools/avr/etc
AVR_TOOLS_PATH = c:/progra~1/atmel/bin
AVR_INC_PATH = c:/progra~1/atmel/avr/include/avr
PORT = //./COM$(COM)
F_CPU = 16000000

##########################################################
##########################################################

I've got different COMs because I'm working on two different boards at the same time.

______
Rob

[Reply #9 on:]

Thanks everyone for your precious suggestions.

[Reply #10 on:]

can somebody mod the code-blocks for compiling ide out of box.. (its an open source ide)..

[Reply #11 on:]

I use Linux and prefer Kate

[Reply #12 on:]

Hi,
I've been using Arduino for a couple of months now and I really like it but I agree that the IDE is OK but not the best IDE I've used but what do you expect for free!

I've used Notepad++ for a while and I thought I'd give it a try for sketches, WOW it's brilliant.

I found the NPPExec plugin for Notepad++ and, if I understand it correctly, it can run scripts to run external compilers etc.
Has anyone got any experience using this pugin with Notepad++ to drive the make process etc.

Or some other options: -

• Can we request the Authors of the Arduino IDE to make a plugin for Notepad to give us a button to compile the Sketch?
• Add some of the features found in notepad++ to the Arduino IDE, like auto indent, highlight matching words, auto grouping by braces.

Just some of my thoughts.

[Reply #13 on:]

The IDE offers an "external editor" mode. This will disable the internal editor and the IDE will only upload. Do not forget to save before doing so.
The alternate approach is to use a makefile / sconstruct and let Notepad++ call it.

[Reply #14 on:]

I've been using Notepad++ for some time, it's a great editor. So far I've found it easy to ALT-TAB to a DOS window and run make from there.

Does NPPexec make this any easier/better? As usual with sourceforge stuff I can't find any documentation.

______
Rob