Re: [cdt-dev] As promised, an FAQ start

[Mike Capp <aphelion@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thomas Fletcher wrote:

>  Here is some starter text for the expanded FAQ which we were discussing
> [snip]
>  
Good stuff. Since this will (hopefully) be a fairly high-traffic 
subject, and since it's soliciting input from newbies as well as 
developers, how about moving the draft and discussion to the CDT wiki?

There's also an oldish FAQ at 
http://dev.eclipse.org/viewcvs/index.cgi/%7Echeckout%7E/cdt-home/user/faq.html?cvsroot=Tools_Project 
- some of this might be useful.

> Q: I just installed Eclipse and the CDT.  However, CDT does not recognize
> the 
> existing toolchain [ie Visual Studio, Borland, Watcom, Cygwin, MinGW, GCC, 
> etc]. How do I make the CDT recognize these tools?
>
> A: The current CDT doesn't integrate with a specific toolchain, but rather 
> integrates with a build command, such as make, nmake, jam ant etc and this 
> build command drives the toolchain.  The default build command is make, but 
> can be configured as part of the project properties.
>  
For the version I'm using (1.1.0 Win32) there are some other points that 
could be added regarding the "default build command":

- The current directory for any build command is the one containing 
.project - this is pretty obvious, but it wouldn't hurt to say it 
explicitly.

- The default build command has to be a real executable; a make.bat in 
the .project directory doesn't work. Might sound daft, but I didn't have 
my (mingw) make on my system path, and I don't have or want my makefile 
in my .project directory, so a forwarding .bat file was the first thing 
I tried when the default command didn't work. A .bat file *can* be 
configured as a custom build command in Project Properties, oddly.

- The default build command is NOT "make", which would build the first - 
and by convention, the default - goal in the makefile, but "make all", 
which requires an "all" goal to be explicitly defined. Personally I 
think this is a mistake, but in any case it means that the default CDT 
build command can fail where "make" executed in the same directory at 
the command prompt would succeed.

Cheers,
Mike