Tools

IDEs

See article List of Integrated Development Environments

Rapid Application Development / GUI Builders

Available Open Tools:

• wxFormBuilder - Open-source designer written in C++. Supports C++, python and XRC. (also see sourceforge home)
• wxDev-C++ - is an extension of Dev-C++. This program helps you to create dialogs and frames for wxWidgets visually using a form designer. With all the wonderful features of Dev-C++, wxDev-C++ is still being actively developed. The main aim of this project is to provide the wxWidgets community with a free, open-source, commercial-grade IDE/RAD tool for development with wxWidgets.
• Code::Blocks - Free and Open-source IDE for C/C++ with integrated RAD designer for wxWidgets named wxSmith.
• wxGlade - Open-source designer written with wxPython. Supports Python, C++, Perl and XRC. (Last release in 2008 but still seems active)

Inactive :

• XRCed - Simple, open-source dialog editor specifically made for generating XRC and written with wxPython (last updated in 2007)
• VisualWX - Freeware IDE and RAD tool with support for MinGW, C++, Python, Perl, Ruby, and Lua (last updated in 2007)

Available Proprietary Tools:

• wxDesigner - Proprietary tool written by Robert Roebling, member of the core wxWidgets team. €129 single-user licence, €270 10-user licence. Supports C++, Perl, Python, C#, and XRC.
• DialogBlocks - Proprietary tool written by Julian Smart, the wxWidgets project lead. $85 US (about €66) single-user licence. Supports most common compilers, can generate various build project files, and supports C++ and XRC.
• wxForms for Delphi - Proprietary Form Designer plugin and wxWidgets Pascal wrapper for Borland / Code Gear Delphi. $30-$60 single-user license. Works with the Delphi 7 to Delphi 2009.
• wxForms for C++ - Proprietary plugin for Borland / Code Gear C++ Builder. $30-$50 single-user license. Works with the free C++ Builder 6.0 Personal Edition.
• Philasmicos Entwickler Studio - Proprietary tool written by Philasmicos. Free home edition available. German-speaking support.

See Also:

• List of Integrated Development Environments - List of IDEs that also contain RAD functionality.
• Comparison of wxSmith features - Comparison of wxWidgets RAD tools on the Code::Blocks wiki.

Build Management

• Makefile - Writing a simple makefile.
• Bakefile (Official Site) - The official build system of wxWidgets. Includes a generic bakefile for wxWidgets applications.
• Autoconf (Official Site) - How to configure a wxWidgets project to use GNU Autoconf/Automake.
• Scons (Official Site) - A build system written using Python.
• CMake (Official Site) - A guide to using the CMake cross platform project generator with wxWidgets.
• premake4 (Official Site) - Helper script to use premake4 project generator with wxWidgets.
• Waf - Initially designed to be a performance improvement over scons, ended up being a totally new project

Documentation

API Oriented (Reference):

• Doxygen
• CppDoc
• NDoc

General Use (Manuals):

• Tex2RTF

Debugging

• GDB - The GNU debugger
• DDD (Data Display Debugger) (Official Site) - Frontend for GDB
• KDbg - Frontend for GDB
• GVD - Frontend for GDB

Testing

Available Tools:

• CxxTest - Open source C++ unit testing suite.
• WDTestHarness: A wxWidgets wrapper around TestSuite
• CppUnit - A C++ port of the DUnit unit testing framework.
  • wxTestRunner - A wxWidgets wrapper around CppUnit.
• Eggplant - Proprietary Mac OS X only GUI testing framework ($499 to $4,590).
• Xnee - A GNU GUI testing suite for X11 applications.
• Zephyr - A cross-platform GUI testing suite built with wxWidgets. From the site: "Zephyr is an automated functional and regression testing tool. It will test any application, written in any language, that has a GUI interface. Zephyr takes the place of a user: Pointing, clicking and entering text." (commercial)
• swWxGuiTesting - A cross-platform (tested under MSW, Linux GTK2 and Mac OS X) open source GUI testing framework that is based on CppUnit and allows for pragmatic automated testing of wxWidgets based GUIs. Creating test cases for existing GUIs is facilitated by the featured extendable capture & replay (C&R) technology. (See also the initial wx developer mailing list discussion/announcement)
• WebUI Test Studio - A tool for cross-browser testing of HTML, AJAX, Silverlight and MVC applications.

See Also:

• Cunningham GUI Testing Wikipage - Documentation and discussion of various GUI testing methods.

Performance Analysis

• CodeGuard (part of Turbo C++ and C++ Builder 6.0) - This hidden utility in Turbo C++ will help you pinpoint the memory leaks in your code. Use the prebuilt wxWidgets CodePak from CodePaks to build your wxWidgets app in Turbo C++.
• gprof (part of GNU Binutils) - Shows what functions were called most, and in what functions the program spent most of its time.
• Valgrind - A memory oriented profiler that contains a suite of the following tools for use on Linux: a memory error detector, a cache (time) profiler, a call-graph profiler, and a heap (space) profiler.
• ccmalloc - An open source C/C++ memory profiler and memory leak tracer.
• ElectricFence - A malloc() debugger for Linux and Unix. This will stop your program on the exact instruction that overruns or under-runs a malloc() buffer.
• Visual Studio - Contains a built-in profiler and memory leak detection.
• LTProf - A line level C++/VB profiler for Windows that uses PDB (MS debug format) debug information. $50 per license, bulk discounts available.
• IBM Rational Purify - Proprietary memory corruption and leak detection profiler for Unix and Windows. $780 for Windows, $2,465 for Unix.
• Sleepy - Free (GPL) profiler for Windows, that uses PDB debug information. See very sleepy for an updated version with call-graph profiling and improved UI.
• AQtime - Proprietary performance profiler and memory and resource debugging toolset for Microsoft, Borland, Intel, Compaq and GNU compilers. $600 single-user license.
• AMD CodeAnalyst - Free (registration required) profiler designed to optimize Windows and Linux applications to run faster on AMD CPUs. This profiler allows you to inspect much more than normal source code performance measurements, it can really help you find bottlenecks on assembly level. (For example: it can tell when branch prediction was wrong and much more).
• Oprofile - Open source system-wide profiler for Linux capable of profiling all running code at low overhead. This is the profiler AMD recommends as the Linux counter part of CodeAnalyst.
• Intel VTune - Proprietary Windows and Linux profiler with support for optimizing for specialized Intel processors. $699 single user license.
• Zoom - Proprietary Linux profiler $399 single user license.

Automatic Updates

• Sparkle and Sparkle for Carbon (needed for wx-2.8 and Carbon builds) - De facto standard apps updater on OS X.
• WinSparkle - Sparkle port for Windows.
• WebUpdate - WebUpdate component (based on wxWidgets).

Other Tools

• UPX - reduce the size of executables
• Making Installers - Making packages/installers on various platforms.
• Development Tools - e.g., using ccache to speed up compiles
• cppcheck An open source static code analysis tool.