Software:Code::Blocks

Short description: Free and open source, cross-platform IDE

Code::Blocks

Code::Blocks 16.01
Developer(s)	The Code::Blocks team
Initial release	2005 (2005)
Stable release	20.03-r11983 / March 29, 2020 (2020-03-29)
Preview release	20.03-r13107 / December 10, 2022 (2022-12-10)
Written in	C++ (wxWidgets)
Operating system	Cross-platform
Type	IDE
License	GPL-3.0-only
Website	www.codeblocks.org

Code::Blocks is a free, open-source cross-platform IDE that supports multiple compilers including GCC, Clang and Visual C++. It is developed in C++ using wxWidgets as the GUI toolkit. Using a plugin architecture, its capabilities and features are defined by the provided plugins. Currently, Code::Blocks is oriented towards C, C++, and Fortran. It has a custom build system and optional Make support.

Code::Blocks is being developed for Windows and Linux and has been ported to FreeBSD, OpenBSD and Solaris. The latest binary provided for macOS version is 13.12 released on 2013/12/26 (compatible with Mac OS X 10.6 and later), but more recent versions can be compiled and MacPorts supplies version 17.12.

History

After releasing two release candidate versions, 1.0rc1 on July 25, 2005 and 1.0rc2 on October 25, 2005, instead of making a final release, the project developers started adding many new features, with the final release being repeatedly postponed. Instead, there were nightly builds of the latest SVN version made available on a daily basis.

The first stable release was on February 28, 2008, with the version number changed to 8.02. The versioning scheme was changed to that of Ubuntu, with the major and minor number representing the year and month of the release. Version 20.03 is the latest stable release; however for the most up-to-date version the user can download the relatively stable nightly build or download the source code from SVN.

In April 2020, a critical software vulnerability was found in the Code::Blocks IDE v17.12, identified by CVE-2020-10814.

Jennic Limited distributes a version of Code::Blocks customized to work with its microcontrollers.

Features

Compilers

Code::Blocks supports multiple compilers, including GCC, MinGW, Digital Mars, Microsoft Visual C++, Borland C++, LLVM Clang, Watcom, LCC and the Intel C++ compiler. Although the IDE was designed for the C++ language, there is some support for other languages, including Fortran and D. A plug-in system is included to support other programming languages.

Code editor

The IDE features syntax highlighting and code folding (through its Scintilla editor component), C++ code completion, class browser, a hex editor and many other utilities. Opened files are organized into tabs. The code editor supports font and font size selection and personalized syntax highlighting colours.

Debugger

The Code::Blocks debugger has full breakpoint support. It also allows the user to debug their program by having access to the local function symbol and argument display, user-defined watches, call stack, disassembly, custom memory dump, thread switching, CPU registers and GNU Debugger Interface.

GUI designer

As of version 13.12 Code::Blocks comes with a GUI designer called wxSmith. It is a derivative port of wxWidgets version 2.9.4. To make a complete wxWidgets application, the appropriate wxWidgets SDK must be installed.

User migration

Some of Code::Blocks features are targeted at users migrating from other IDE's - these include Dev-C++, Microsoft Visual C++ project import (MSVC 7 & 10), and Dev-C++ Devpak support.

Project files and build system

Code::Blocks uses a custom build system, which stores its information in XML-based project files. It can optionally use external makefiles, which simplifies interfacing with projects using the GNU or qmake build systems.

See also

• Comparison of integrated development environments
• Geany
• SciTE
• CodeLite