Linux software development IDE quandary

[Mark Woodward]

Here's my problem:

I'm old. I'm set in my ways.  I have a LOT of code that has accumulated 
over my career and stored in libraries that I use for various projects 
from time to time.

Most of the code is pretty good, I think, some of it is crap that works 
or mostly works. It builds on almost any platform with a little tweaking 
from time to time. Subsets of this code have been used on embedded x86 
projects, embedded Linux ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, Windows, solaris, Linux (of 
course). You get the picture. To accomplish this, I have some pretty 
elaborate make files. Every 5 or so years, I attempt to refactor the 
make system, and never quite get there. the automake stuff is such a 
PITA I spend a day or so on it and get frustrated.

I'm getting a little tired with the vi/make/gdb paradigm. It is getting 
laborious. With bigger monitors and more screen real estate, IDE's are 
starting to make more sense. The problem, none of the IDEs I have looked 
at support external projects very well. Unless you use their project and 
make system, the IDE is reduced to an MDI editor and a way to run make. 
You don't get any of the benefit of the tags and stuff.

Sure, I can add this crap to my make files, but jeez, then why bother 
with the ide in the first place?

Anyone have any suggestions? Want to share your your misery?