I am porting windows serial port communication code over to linux and need some help

I use visual studio 2005/2008 on my windows machine and want something equally as powerful(asking a lot). I have been introduced to eclipse but cannot get it running properly. I only can get the sample hello world to work, and cannot get my own makefiles to be used.

I want to know what other options are out there... Is eclipse all there is that have the features I want..(debugging, detailed descriptions on errors, auto compile)

I have seen posts about vim, emacs, anjuta but want to know whats the best/why that is and what else there is

Thank you very much

Greg

Sadly, and you're going to hear and see it a lot in "Which is better..."-type threads; there isn't one.

Eclipse is good for generic programming, as while it is originally designed for Java programming, it can "easily" switch to C and C++, PHP, Python or any mode for your preferred language. Netbeans comes in a close second, but again, it's got a heavy Java focus.

If you are doing C and C++ programming, and are used to MSVS, QDevelop would be my next suggestion - I *personally* think that Anjuta is kind of flimsy.

My all-time favourite IDE for C and C++ programming is Motor - it is text-based though, no GUI. Vi, Vim and Emacs are just freakishly powerful text editors that can be extended to provide an IDE feel.

It all boils down to personal preference - try out as many as you can and pick the one you like the best.

EDIT: For what it's worth though, I should say that I am not, primarily, a C or C++ developer. I do Common Lisp and Java.