A programming tool or software development tool is a computer program that

software developer Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, programming, documenting, testing, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications, frameworks, or other software components. Software development invo ...

s use to create, debug, maintain, or otherwise support other programs and applications. The term usually refers to relatively simple programs, that can be combined to accomplish a task, much as one might use multiple hands to fix a physical object. The most basic tools are a source code editor and a

compiler 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 th ...

or interpreter, which are used ubiquitously and continuously. Other tools are used more or less depending on the language, development methodology, and individual engineer, often used for a discrete task, like a debugger or profiler. Tools may be discrete programs, executed separately – often from the

command line A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invoking executables and pro ...

– or may be parts of a single large program, called an integrated development environment (IDE). In many cases, particularly for simpler use, simple ad hoc techniques are used instead of a tool, such as print debugging instead of using a debugger, manual timing (of overall program or section of code) instead of a profiler, or tracking bugs in a text file or spreadsheet instead of a bug tracking system. The distinction between tools and applications is murky. For example, developers use simple databases (such as a file containing a list of important values) all the time as tools. However a full-blown database is usually thought of as an application or software in its own right. For many years, computer-assisted software engineering (CASE) tools were sought after. Successful tools have proven elusive. In one sense, CASE tools emphasized design and architecture support, such as for UML. But the most successful of these tools are IDEs.

Uses of programming tools

Translating from human to computer language

Modern computers are very complex and in order to productively program them, various abstractions are needed. For example, rather than writing down a program's binary representation a programmer will write a program in a programming language like C, Java or Python. Programming tools like

assembler Assembler may refer to: Arts and media * Nobukazu Takemura, avant-garde electronic musician, stage name Assembler * Assemblers, a fictional race in the ''Star Wars'' universe * Assemblers, an alternative name of the superhero group Champions of ...

s and linkers translate a program from a human write-able and readable source language into the bits and bytes that can be executed by a computer. Interpreters interpret the program on the fly to produce the desired behavior. These programs perform many well defined and repetitive tasks that would nonetheless be time-consuming and error-prone when performed by a human, like laying out parts of a program in memory and fixing up the references between parts of a program as a linker does. Optimizing compilers on the other hand can perform complex transformations on the source code in order to improve the execution speed or other characteristics of a program. This allows a programmer to focus more on higher level, conceptual aspects of a program without worrying about the details of the machine it is running on.

Making program information available for humans

Because of the high complexity of software, it is not possible to understand most programs at a single glance even for the most experienced software developer. The abstractions provided by high-level programming languages also make it harder to understand the connection between the source code written by a programmer and the actual program's behaviour. In order to find bugs in programs and to prevent creating new bugs when extending a program, a software developer uses some programming tools to visualize all kinds of information about programs. For example, a debugger allows a programmer to extract information about a running program in terms of the source language used to program it. The debugger can compute the value of a variable in the source program from the state of the concrete machine by using information stored by the compiler. Memory debuggers can directly point out questionable or outright wrong memory accesses of running programs which may otherwise remain undetected and are a common source of program failures.

List of tools

Software tools come in many forms: *

Binary compatibility Binary-code compatibility (binary compatible or object-code-compatible) is a property of a computer system, meaning that it can run the same executable code, typically machine code for a general-purpose computer CPU, that another computer system ...

analysis tools * Bug databases:

Comparison of issue tracking systems This article is a comparison of issue tracking systems that are notable, including bug tracking systems, help desk and service desk issue tracking systems, as well as asset management systems. The comparison includes client-server application, d ...

– Including bug tracking systems *Build tools: Build automation, List of build automation software *

Call graph A call graph (also known as a call multigraph) is a control-flow graph, which represents calling relationships between subroutines in a computer program. Each node represents a procedure and each edge ''(f, g)'' indicates that procedure ''f'' ca ...

Code coverage In computer science, test coverage is a percentage measure of the degree to which the source code of a program is executed when a particular test suite is run. A program with high test coverage has more of its source code executed during testing ...

: Code coverage#Software code coverage tools. * Code review: List of tools for code review *Code sharing sites: Freshmeat,

Krugle Krugle delivers continuously updated, federated access to all of the code and technical information in the enterprise. Krugle search helps an organization pinpoint critical code patterns and application issues - immediately and at massive scale. K ...

, SourceForge, GitHub. See also Code search engines. * Compilation and linking tools: GNU toolchain, gcc,

Microsoft Visual Studio Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including web site, websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platfor ...

CodeWarrior CodeWarrior is an integrated development environment (IDE) published by NXP Semiconductors for editing, compiling, and debugging software for several microcontrollers and microprocessors ( Freescale ColdFire, ColdFire+, Kinetis, Qorivva, PX, Fr ...

, Xcode, ICC * Debuggers: Debugger#List of debuggers. See also Debugging. * Disassemblers: Generally

reverse-engineering Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompli ...

tools. *

Documentation generator A documentation generator is a programming tool that generates software documentation intended for programmers ( API documentation) or end users (end-user guide), or both, from a set of source code files, and in some cases, binary files. Some gener ...

Comparison of documentation generators The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of documentation generators. Please see the individual products' articles for further information. Unless otherwise specified in footnotes, comparisons are based on the s ...

, help2man,

Plain Old Documentation Plain Old Documentation (pod) is a lightweight markup language used to document the Perl programming language as well as Perl modules and programs. Design Pod is designed to be a simple, clean language with just enough syntax to be useful. It pur ...

asciidoc AsciiDoc is a human-readable document format, semantically equivalent to DocBook XML, but using plain-text mark-up conventions. AsciiDoc documents can be created using any text editor and read “as-is”, or rendered to HTML or any other for ...

Formal methods In computer science, formal methods are mathematically rigorous techniques for the specification, development, and verification of software and hardware systems. The use of formal methods for software and hardware design is motivated by the expe ...

: Mathematical techniques for specification, development and verification * GUI interface generators *Library interface generators: SWIG *Integration Tools * Memory debuggers are frequently used in programming languages (such as C and

C++ C, or c, is the third letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''cee'' (pronounced ), plural ''cees''. History "C" ...

) that allow manual memory management and thus the possibility of memory leaks and other problems. They are also useful to optimize efficiency of memory usage. Examples:

dmalloc Dmalloc is a C memory debugger library written by Gray Watson to assist programmers in finding a variety of dynamic memory allocation mistakes. It replaces parts (such as malloc) of the C standard library provided by the operating system or compi ...

, Electric Fence, Insure++, Valgrind * Parser generators: Parsing#Parser development software * Performance analysis or profiling: List of performance analysis tools * Revision control:

List of revision control software This is a list of notable software for version control. Local data model In the local-only approach, all developers must use the same file system. Open source * Revision Control System (RCS) – stores the latest version and backward del ...

Comparison of revision control software In software development, version control is a class of systems responsible for managing changes to computer programs or other collections of information such that revisions have a logical and consistent organization. The following tables inclu ...

Scripting language A scripting language or script language is a programming language that is used to manipulate, customize, and automate the facilities of an existing system. Scripting languages are usually interpreted at runtime rather than compiled. A scriptin ...

s: PHP,

Awk AWK (''awk'') is a domain-specific language designed for text processing and typically used as a data extraction and reporting tool. Like sed and grep, it is a filter, and is a standard feature of most Unix-like operating systems. The AWK lan ...

, Perl,

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pr ...

REXX Rexx (Restructured Extended Executor) is a programming language that can be interpreted or compiled. It was developed at IBM by Mike Cowlishaw. It is a structured, high-level programming language designed for ease of learning and reading. ...

, Ruby,

Shell Shell may refer to: Architecture and design * Shell (structure), a thin structure ** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses ** Thin-shell structure Science Biology * Seashell, a hard o ...

Tcl TCL or Tcl or TCLs may refer to: Business * TCL Technology, a Chinese consumer electronics and appliance company ** TCL Electronics, a subsidiary of TCL Technology * Texas Collegiate League, a collegiate baseball league * Trade Centre Limited, ...

*Search: grep, find *Source code Clones/Duplications Finding: Duplicate code#Tools * Source code editor ** Text editors: List of text editors,

Comparison of text editors This article provides basic comparisons for notable text editors. More feature details for text editors are available from the '' Category of text editor features'' and from the individual products' articles. This article may not be up-to-date or n ...

* Source code formatting: indent, pretty-printers, beautifiers, minifiers * Source code generation tools: Automatic programming#Implementations * Static code analysis: lint, List of tools for static code analysis *Unit testing:

List of unit testing frameworks This article is a list of tables of code-driven unit testing frameworks for various programming languages. Some, but not all, of these are based on xUnit. Columns (classification) * Name: This column contains the name of the framework and wi ...

IDEs

Integrated development environments combine the features of many tools into one package. They for example make it easier to do specific tasks, such as searching for content only in files in a particular project. IDEs may for example be used for development of enterprise-level applications. Different aspects of IDEs for specific programming languages can be found in this

comparison of integrated development environments The following tables list notable software packages that are nominal IDEs; standalone tools such as source code editors and GUI builders are not included. These IDEs are listed in alphabetical order of the supported language. ActionScript ...

References

Software Development Tools for Petascale Computing Workshop 2007
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External links

{{Software engineering *