IDE
KDevelop
- A full featured IDE!
- License: GPL
- Supports many languages: Ada, C, C++, Database, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Shell
- Supports many kinds of projects: KDE, but also GTK, Gnome, kernel drivers, embedded (Opie)...
- Many features: editor, syntax highlighting, code completion, compiler interface, debugger interface, file manager, class browser... Nice overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kdevelop
Eclipse
- An extensible, plug-in based software development kit, typically used for creating IDEs.
- Supported by the Eclipse foundation, a non-profit consortium of major software industry vendors (IBM, Intel, Borland, Nokia, Wind River, Zend, Computer Associates...).
- Free Software license (Eclipse Public License). Incompatible with the GPL.
- Supported platforms: GNU/Linux, Unix,Windows
Extremely popular: created a lot of attraction.
- Eclipse is actually a platform composed of many projects:
http://www.eclipse.org/projects/
- Some projects are dedicated to integrating into Eclipse features useful for embedded developers (cross-compilation, remote development, remote debugging, etc.)
- The platform is used by major embedded Linux software vendors for their (proprietary) system development kits: MontaVista DevRocket, TimeSys TimeStorm, Wind River Workbench, Sysgo ELinOS.
- Used by free software build systems and development environments too, such as Yocto and Buildroot.
Eclipse is a huge project. It would require an entire training session!
Other popular solutions
- Many embedded Linux developers simply use Vim or Emacs. They can integrate with debuggers, source code browsers such as cscope, offer syntax highlighting and more.
- Geany is an easy-to-use graphical code editor.
- CodeBlocks is also quite popular, since it's also available on the Windows platform.
All these editors are available in most Linux distributions, simply install them and try them out!