Code::Blocks is a

free Free may refer to: Concept * Freedom, having the ability to do something, without having to obey anyone/anything * Freethought, a position that beliefs should be formed only on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism * Emancipate, to procur ...

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

cross-platform In computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software r ...

IDE that supports multiple

compilers In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs that ...

including GCC,

Clang Clang is a compiler front end for the C, C++, Objective-C, and Objective-C++ programming languages, as well as the OpenMP, OpenCL, RenderScript, CUDA, and HIP frameworks. It acts as a drop-in replacement for the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), ...

and

Visual C++ Microsoft Visual C++ (MSVC) is a compiler for the C, C++ and C++/CX programming languages by Microsoft. MSVC is proprietary software; it was originally a standalone product but later became a part of Visual Studio and made available in both tria ...

. It is developed in

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

using

wxWidgets wxWidgets (formerly wxWindows) is a widget toolkit and tools library for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for cross-platform applications. wxWidgets enables a program's GUI code to compile and run on several computer platforms with mini ...

as the

GUI The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

toolkit. Using a plugin architecture, its capabilities and features are defined by the provided plugins. Currently, Code::Blocks is oriented towards C,

, and Fortran. It has a custom build system and optional

Make Make or MAKE may refer to: *Make (magazine), a tech DIY periodical *Make (software), a software build tool *Make, Botswana, in the Kalahari Desert *Make Architects Make Architects is an international architecture practice headquartered in London ...

support. Code::Blocks is being developed for

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

and

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

and has been ported to

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular ...

,Code::Blocks in FreeBSD's ports collection
/ref>

OpenBSD OpenBSD is a security-focused, free and open-source, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by forking NetBSD 1.0. According to the website, the OpenBSD project em ...

and

Solaris Solaris may refer to: Arts and entertainment Literature, television and film * ''Solaris'' (novel), a 1961 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem ** ''Solaris'' (1968 film), directed by Boris Nirenburg ** ''Solaris'' (1972 film), directed by ...

. The latest binary provided for

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

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 Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: ''Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All the ...

, 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 stabl
nightly build
or download the source code fro
SVN
In April 2020, a critical software vulnerability was found in the Code::Blocks IDE v17.12, identified by CVE-2020-10814.

Jennic Limited Jennic Limited was a privately held UK-based fabless semiconductor company Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing their fabrication (or ''fab'') to a specialized manufacturer c ...

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

Features

Compilers

Code::Blocks supports multiple compilers, including GCC,

MinGW MinGW ("Minimalist GNU for Windows"), formerly mingw32, is a free and open source software development environment to create Microsoft Windows applications. MinGW includes a port of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), GNU Binutils for Windows ( ...

Digital Mars Digital Mars is a small American software company owned by Walter Bright and based in Vienna, Virginia, that makes C, C++ and D compilers, and associated utilities such as an integrated development environment (IDE) for Windows and DOS, which D ...

Microsoft Visual C++ Microsoft Visual C++ (MSVC) is a compiler for the C, C++ and C++/CX programming languages by Microsoft. MSVC is proprietary software; it was originally a standalone product but later became a part of Visual Studio and made available in both tria ...

Borland C++ Borland C++ is a C and C++ IDE (integrated development environment) for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. It was the successor to Turbo C++ and included a better debugger, the Turbo Debugger, which was written in protected mode DOS. Libraries O ...

, LLVM Clang,

Watcom Watcom International Corporation was a software company, which was founded in 1981 by Wes Graham and Ian McPhee. Founding staff (Fred Crigger, Jack Schueler and McPhee) were formerly members of Professor Graham's Computer Systems Group at the Uni ...

, LCC and the

Intel C++ compiler Intel oneAPI DPC++/C++ Compiler and Intel C++ Compiler Classic are Intel’s C, C++, SYCL, and Data Parallel C++ (DPC++) compilers for Intel processor-based systems, available for Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems. Overview Intel o ...

. 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 Syntax highlighting is a feature of text editors that are used for programming, scripting, or markup languages, such as HTML. The feature displays text, especially source code, in different colours and fonts according to the category of terms ...

and

code folding Code or text folding, or less commonly holophrasting, is a feature of some graphical user interfaces that allows the user to selectively hide ("fold") or display ("unfold") parts of a document. This allows the user to manage large amounts of text ...

(through its

Scintilla Scintilla (the Italian language, Italian and Latin language, Latin word for spark (fire), spark) may refer to: *Scintilla AG, a Swiss electrical engineering company, a 100 percent subsidiary of Robert Bosch GmbH since 2005 *Scintilla (comics), a f ...

editor component), C++

code completion Autocomplete, or word completion, is a feature in which an application predicts the rest of a word a user is typing. In Android and iOS smartphones, this is called predictive text. In graphical user interfaces, users can typically press the tab ...

, class browser, a

hex editor A hex editor (or ''binary file editor'' or ''byte editor'') is a computer program that allows for manipulation of the fundamental binary data that constitutes a computer file. The name 'hex' comes from ' hexadecimal', a standard numerical format f ...

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 A disassembler is a computer program that translates machine language into assembly language—the inverse operation to that of an assembler. A disassembler differs from a decompiler, which targets a high-level language rather than an assembly lan ...

, custom memory dump, thread switching,

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, and ...

registers and

GNU Debugger The GNU Debugger (GDB) is a portable debugger that runs on many Unix-like systems and works for many programming languages, including Ada, C, C++, Objective-C, Free Pascal, Fortran, Go, and partially others. History GDB was first written by ...

Interface.

GUI designer

As of version 13.12 Code::Blocks comes with a

GUI designer A graphical user interface builder (or GUI builder), also known as GUI designer or sometimes RAD IDE, is a software development tool that simplifies the creation of GUIs by allowing the designer to arrange graphical control elements (often cal ...

called wxSmith. It is a derivative port of wxWidgets version 2.9.4.CodeBlocks 13.12 Changelog
/ref> 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++ Dev-C++ is a free full-featured integrated development environment (IDE) distributed under the GNU General Public License for programming in C and C++. It was originally developed by Colin Laplace and first released in 1998. It is written in Del ...

, 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 qmake is a utility that automates the generation of makefiles. Makefiles are used by the program make to build executable programs from source code; therefore qmake is a make-makefile tool, or ''makemake'' for short. The makefiles that qmake pro ...

build systems.

References

External links

* {{GUI builders Cross-platform free software Cross-platform software Free integrated development environments Free software programmed in C++ Linux integrated development environments Software that uses Scintilla Software that uses wxWidgets Software using the GPL license