Choosing Your Development Tools
Before we discuss wxWidgets installation, let's briefly look at choices in compiler tools to use with wxWidgets. Note that although cross-compilation is possible (compiling on one platform to run on another), you will generally need to compile, debug, and test on each platform that you support. However, you probably have a favorite platform you prefer to develop on, just compiling and testing on the others. If you only have one machine for Windows and Linux development, consider using a tool such as the excellent VMware virtual machine software to run several operating systems simultaneously.
Tools on Windows
Microsoft's Visual Studio (see the section "WindowsMicrosoft Visual Studio") has a very good IDE, which makes debugging productive, and the compiler is good at optimizing executables for space and speed. It's also reasonably fast to run (though slower than Borland C++). This compiler is highly recommended for wxWidgets work, and it is the tool of choice for most wxWidgets developers on Windows.Appendix E, "Third-Party Tools for wxWidgets," for other IDEs and tools.All the compilers mentioned here can be "driven" by DialogBlocks (on the accompanying CD-ROM), so you can design your dialogs and other user interface elements in addition to building and running your application. See Appendix C for more on DialogBlocks.
Tools on Linux and Mac OS X
On Linux, GCC is usually installed by default. However, you can use it in a number of different ways. You can use command-line tools (configure, make, and GDB for debugging), or you can use an IDE such as KDevelop, as described in this chapter (though you'll still compile the wxWidgets libraries from the command line). You also can use the command line to compile and then use GDB within Emacs to step through your application, or you can use the graphical debugger DDD.Appendix C for more on DialogBlocks.
