Linux software development IDE quandary

[david-8uUts6sDVDvs2Lz0fTdYFQ at public.gmane.org (David Kramer)]

Mark Woodward wrote:
> 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?

Why indeed?  Then don't.  What you want is not a full "Do everything my
way or not at all" IDE, but a very powerful editor. that has the ability
 to call YOUR build environment.

I strongly recommend http://www.jedit.org.  I've talked about it a lot
here and have been using it for a very long time.  jEdit is what makes
me hate Eclipse so much, because jEdit blows Eclipse out of the water as
an editor (and because Eclipse's build process is almost completely opaque).