I am fairly new to programming and for my cs class i need to run individual programs. they don’t need to interact with anything else, so i am trying to just run the file I’m currently on but Kate just greys out the option. I really want to avoid using projects if i can because they’re just extra effort for no reason when I only need to run a single file. I did try using one, but Kate doesn’t have a new project button for some reason and i had some trouble with Cmake.
I’m aware that these are actually pretty basic things, but I can’t find anything online that actually explains how to use Kate at all. I would try using something else, but every IDE seems to have this same issue where by default it can’t run code and it has no documentation of any kind regarding actually running code, so i’ll just stick with the one that came with my distro.
also as a bonus question, why does every IDE seem to require you to configure every single option before it can run code and why do they all seem to discourage doing anything less than making an entire app?
also as a bonus question, why does every IDE seem to require you to configure every single option before it can run code
What IDE’s have you tried?
Kate (and vscode) aren’t really IDE’s, they’re more like extremely extensible text editors. You can make them IDE’s, but they dob’t come like that out of the box.
On the other hands, actual IDE’s often have the inbuilt capability to install and manage the programming language related software.
I’ve tried Kate, vscode, some python one on windows (idk which one it was years ago), kdevelop, and I think a couple others but I forgot which ones.
VSCode is absolutely an IDE. It is full of IDE features. The idea that it isn’t an IDE is one of those weird memes that won’t die, like people saying “an historic occasion”.
Vscode is an IDE, but only after I spent 15 minutes finding and selecting the appropriate java extensions and ensuring that my Linux system had Java installed.
But what was a 15 minute process to me, could easily be a 2 hour struggle to someone who is setting up a development environment for the first time and “just wants autocomplete and debugging”.
Yes in some ways it is not a beginner friendly IDE. I would also point to
launch.jsonas being a right arse.Still an IDE though.
Vscode is a text editor, sorry…“code editor”. Like you so graciously called out in a later comment, MS even clarified that it’s not an IDE. If VSCode is an IDE then so is VIM or Sublime Text or Notepad++, which of course is nonsense. IDE doesn’t just mean integrated development environment, it means it was meant to be used that way. Just because I turned my lawnmower into something that looks like an F1 race car doesn’t mean it’s an F1 race car.
You’re clearly aware of all of the arguments why VS code isn’t an IDE so it’s pointless to have this argument, but you seem to think that just because something looks like an IDE means it is, which is just categorically false.
MS even clarified that it’s not an IDE
Microsoft doesn’t get to define what an IDE is. Also… I actually reread what they said and the implicitly say it is an IDE (and a “code editor” which is a fairly meaningless term):
Visual Studio Code is a streamlined code editor with support for development operations like debugging, task running, and version control. It aims to provide just the tools a developer needs for a quick code-build-debug cycle and leaves more complex workflows to fuller featured IDEs, such as Visual Studio IDE.
“to fuller featured IDEs”, not “to IDEs”.
They didn’t have that originally, they added it because of people like you that are arguing that it’s an IDE when it clearly isn’t.
Code editor makes perfect sense. It’s a text editor with code highlighting, fast search, and an understanding of different languages, oftentimes with command windows to make working with text easier. Clearly distinct from something like notepad, that only has the ability to edit text and nothing else.
They didn’t have that originally
They added it within 4 months of launch.
they added it because of people like you that are arguing that it’s an IDE when it clearly isn’t.
They added text saying it is an IDE because they didn’t want people to think it is an IDE? I think you’ve misunderstood.
It’s a text editor with code highlighting, fast search, and an understanding of different languages…
And integrated debugging, testing, refactoring, … Why exactly do you think it is not an IDE?
They didn’t add text saying it’s an IDE. It clearly says it’s a code editor. They add a snippet about comparing it to actual IDEs to placate people like you, and no it wasn’t within 4 months of launch, it was years.
lol it doesn’t have testing or debugging by default! You literally have to install extensions to do those things! It has panels where those things go, but they don’t do anything without an extension. Try running a js test from the gutter on a clean install. You literally can’t.
They’re saying it’s a code editor and an IDE.
lol it doesn’t have testing or debugging by default!
So the fact that they’ve designed it with an extensible architecture somehow makes it not an IDE? That doesn’t make any sense at all.
I guess Eclipse isn’t an IDE either then?
Platformio is an IDE based on VSCode.
VSCode CAN be an IDE.
But it isn’t natively an IDEI would say that for something to be an IDE it has to be meant to be an IDE. Clearly Microsoft didn’t intend for it to be an IDE or they would have called it that. Just because you can build something that looks and performs like an F1 race car in your garage out of an old lawnmower or ford Taurus or whatever doesn’t make it an F1 car. Unless it’s racing at Monaco in an F1 race, it ain’t an F1 car. Same thing with VS Code. It’s a code editor, like Sublime or vim.
Honestly interested what makes something not an IDE but can be one? The fact that it requires plugins to turn it into an IDE?
Does that mean Eclipse is not an IDE either, since it requires either JDT or CDT to be anywhere near useful?
I’m interested in that too, where’s the line and how much does it matter?
There isn’t a hard line. IDE means Integrated Development Environment. It just means that tools that - in the stone ages - were used separately are integrated into your editor. Common tools that IDEs integrate that would be separate tools with a text editor like Notepad:
- Debuggers
- Code intelligence (auto-complete, refactoring, go-to-definition, find-references, etc.)
- Compile/run/debug shortcuts
- Test running and displaying results
- Version control
VSCode has all of those. The fact that it implements them in a pluggable way doesn’t mean it doesn’t.
Even though “is it an IDE” is a blurry line, VSCode is very clearly far across that line.
The only reasons people say it isn’t are a) as a put-down - it’s not a real IDE like <my favourite alternative> - or b) because Microsoft put some nonsense about it not being an IDE on their website in order to try and explain why they make two IDEs (VSCode and VS).
So Kate is one too then, right? it has all of that and was designed for it to be used as an IDE.
Yes I’d say so.
So I guess vim is also an IDE then? My setup can do all of that.
I don’t really know anything about Vim so I’d have to take your word for it.
To me, something like visual studio is an ide.
Out of the box it can run and debug c# programs. I can step through line by line, I can add breakpoints, I can watch variables.
It is a great experience for developing c#.To get vscode to do that requires a lot of configuration.
Sometimes all that config is done by only 1 plugin.
The fact that there are really well made plugins for so many different languages and frameworks is vscodes power. I don’t just get a js/ts/node/deno ide, but it can be super tailored to Vue/react/svelte/quasar/nuxt/next/whatever.
All while in a familiar editor, and without having to install another program.That’s what I mean by vscode not being an IDE.
Vscode has the ability to be an IDE, but it’s 3rd parties that actually do the work to achieve this.
I struggled with stupid basic things like that (“how do I run a file??!”) when I was beginning to learn programming. What you can do is just open a terminal and run a command, that’s it, like
python main.py. Sorry that it doesn’t answer the question.TBH, I haven’t really used Kate for coding, but I vaguely remember it having a built in a terminal as a pane, like many IDEs
I hadn’t heard of Kate before, so I can’t offer much hands-on advice. I dug around and found a “handbook” here: https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/kate/kate/index.html
Unfortunately it does look like you need to define a project to compile/run anything, which appears to require manually creating a
.kateprojectfile in the directory as outlined here: https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/kate/kate/kate-application-plugin-projects.html#project-createI had exactly the same problem when I moved from languages that were interpreted or combined the IDE and runtime environment into one, and starting to use languages which had their own external compiler. Unfortunately, open source project user documentation is often terrible for beginners (what I found above for Kate seems to be no exception), and IDEs often seem to be written by people who don’t really expect anyone to actually use the included build options (to be fair, most folks seem to like using their own separate build utilities, so probably this is often the case)
If you can tell us which compiler or interpreter you’re using (e.g. gcc, clang, Python), someone can probably tell you how to compile and/or run a single-file program from the terminal with a fairly simple command.
I believe both clang and gcc are present on my system right now. and yeah, the Kate documentation was a little lacking. they do have little pop-ups letting you know though
What language are you programming in?
As far as I’m aware, in many cases, Kate just gives you access to the terminal where you can type commands to compile / run your code.
C
So, I’m a bit rusty, but I believe in Kate you would hit F4 to get a terminal window and you would execute
gcc your_file.c -o your_output_file
Then after that’s run you’d type just “your_output_file” and hit enter
I think on windows you’d need to make sure the output file name ends with .exe but I’m not sure about that, maybe someone else can chime in?
that does work, it’s a little clunkier than i’d like but it’s better than the code not running
Mate, I’ve built a career on that
That’s kind of the bare bones of how it works, underneath all the abstraction layers and pretty GUIs.
Then it evolves.
First, you start splitting your code into multiple source files, either because your programs get too big to keep scrolling up and down one huge file to cross-check things, or because you want to incorporate someone else’s code into your program, and it’s more than just one or two functions you can easily copy and paste. You can still keep compiling and linking all of this in one step, but the command gets so long that you make a shell script/batch file as a shortcut.
After that, you might want to mix-and-match various source files to target different platforms, or to make other bulk changes, and you start going down the rabbit hole of having your shell script take arguments, rather than having a dozen different scripts. And then one day you take another look at “make” and realize that whereas before it seemed like impenetrable overengineering, it now makes complete and obvious sense to you.
Then you discover using “make” (or a similar utility) to split compilation and linking into separate steps, which used to seem nonsensical, but now you’re dealing with codebases that take more than a couple of seconds to compile, or precompiled libraries or DLLs, and you get comfortable with the idea of just hanging on to compiled object files and (re)using them when the source for that part of the program hasn’t changed.
And finally (maybe) you look at some of the crazy stuff in fancy IDEs and understand why it’s there; that it’s just representations of all this other stuff that you now know about and feel competent with. I say “maybe” because I’ve been programming for over 35 years, occasionally professionally but mostly as a hobbyist, and there are still things in IDEs that I either don’t understand, or don’t see the point of having them. But knowing the underlying principles makes me feel comfortable enough to ignore them.
Great!
But now try to set a breakpoint and do some debugging and you’ll realise why most devs use real IDEs instead.
Dishonest and misleading. gdb ./main.elf, break 45. Learn your tools. Optimize for learning. Select tools that generalize. Avoid lock-in.
From my experience and understanding there are generally two ways to ‘run’ a file.
Firstly, the output is an executable itself. Assuming the permissions are valid you can just do “. /yourFile” and it’ll just execute. If the file doesn’t have the proper permissions, just do “chmod +x ./yourFile” to allow execution.
Secondly, some executables require you to run them through a specific program. Such as Java or Python. If Java, it’d be something like “java ./yourFile.jar” If Python, it’d be something like “python ./yourFile.py”
Sometimes it requires extra flags like “-jar” or similar. You just gotta look it up at that point. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
In Kate, you can toggle the terminal through a shortcut for easy access.
When learning a programming language I think it’s better to find the commands you’d use to compile/run the program and run them in the terminal the first few times so you know what’s actually happening behind the run button. Then start running things through the IDE if it’s more convenient. If you tell us the language we can help with the commands (is it C?)
it’s C, I’ll add that to the post in a second
it’s C, I’ll add that to the post in a second
What language are you using?
C, for now.
In that case I would recommend using an IDE that supports C well. On Windows Visual Studio will get you far and it is the easiest to set up with wizards to create projects etc.
Alternatively you could use VSCode but it’s a bit harder to set up.
- Install VSCode
- Install the
clangdextension from the marketplace. It’s better than the official Microsoft C++ one. - Also install the CMake extension.
- Create a CMake project by hand (you need
CMakelists.txtandmain.c). In the CMake make sure you add
set(CMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS TRUE)That will give you perfect code intelligence (error squiggles etc).
Try asking her.
