Best C and assembly editor

Prophet (2496)

31-05-2019, 21:30

Hi all,

I've recently switched to Windows 10, and my good old UltraEdit text editor does not work so well on it compared to Windows 7.

I could go for an upgrade of UltraEdit, but I'd like to consider other recent free alternatives before that.

I'm mainly editing C and Z80 assembly files, and I'm building my projects using makefiles. Here are the key features I'd like to have:

Code browsing (go to definition, reference, etc...).
Code refactoring (renaming a function or global variable on a whole project).
Customizing assembly syntax and highlighting.
Custom build (invoking a makefile)
Build output analysis (in order to catch errors and warnings: double clicking on an error line should open the faulty C/Assembly file and jump to the error line).

I know Eclipse does most of the things described above. It really analyses the C code, and can even distinguish local / parameters variables to display them differently ("semantic analysis" IIRC). The problem is I do not like Eclipse so much. I'm using it at work, and it really feels sluggish...

Other alternatives I've heard of are Sublime Text Editor and Visual Studio Code.

What do you guys think ?

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Par ericb59

Paragon (1125)

31-05-2019, 21:46

I like Sublime text. It's fully customizable.

Par Rataplan

Champion (354)

31-05-2019, 22:31

Out of curiosity, what's different with Notepad++ in Windows 10? I use it daily as my main editor for batch, vbscript, powershell and the like. I never noticed any difference compared to Win7?

Par Louthrax

Prophet (2496)

01-06-2019, 08:36

Rataplan wrote:

Out of curiosity, what's different with Notepad++ in Windows 10? I use it daily as my main editor for batch, vbscript, powershell and the like. I never noticed any difference compared to Win7?

Have not tried with Notepad++, but with UltraEdit, the mouse scrolling has become super-sluggish, and the icons are super-small when using a modern 4K screen.

Par PingPong

Enlighted (4155)

01-06-2019, 09:56

Visual Studio Code is IMHO better than sublimetext. AFAIK the latter lack some sophisticated features like debugging interface:
you can teoretically write a "debug adapter" that allows you to talk, for example with openMSX debugger and do debugging directly in visual studio code, even at source level.

However, you need to code this specific adapter.
for example, there are built-in debuggers for C++, C#, Java, NodeJs, ReactJs / Angular or Plain Javascript, connecting directly with Firefox, or Chrome.

Par Manuel

Ascended (19678)

01-06-2019, 10:41

https://bitbucket.org/erik_maas/openmsxgdb/src/master/ is something similar for gdb

Par PingPong

Enlighted (4155)

01-06-2019, 11:55

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=webfreak...
is the extension that work with gdb (there are others)

Par theNestruo

Champion (429)

01-06-2019, 12:30

Louthrax wrote:

Rataplan wrote:

Out of curiosity, what's different with Notepad++ in Windows 10? I use it daily as my main editor for batch, vbscript, powershell and the like. I never noticed any difference compared to Win7?

Have not tried with Notepad++, but with UltraEdit, the mouse scrolling has become super-sluggish, and the icons are super-small when using a modern 4K screen.

Never used UltraEdit, but I use Notepad++ daily and works perfectly fine. However, its UI is getting older and older, and I switch to more modern editors (VSCode) when I have to work with folders/multiple files, massive search/replace, etc.
My main concerns about VSCode are two: it's quite heavier than Notepad++ (rendering it unusable in my cheap and old netbook; shouldn't be a problem in a modern computer) and, being Electron-based, text is not as crisp as it is in native applications such as Notepad++ (most people can't/doesn't feel this difference; also maybe this is not a problem on high DPI screens).

Even with this two concerns, I definitely would suggest you trying VSCode with the Z80 Macro-Assembler extension for assembly (I don't code C, sorry).

It will provide code analyse/browsing, tasks such as running a makefile, and output analysis (and these can be achieved without extensions: example .vscode/tasks.json file). Not sure about refactoring (but probably search/replace in all files can do the trick) and customizing syntax...

Par Thom

Paladin (711)

01-06-2019, 16:11

I agree with PingPong and theNestruo, Visual Studio Code is nice and easy to use as a portable application as well.

Par Creepy

Champion (335)

01-06-2019, 16:54

I have used geany and notepad++ as editor's but recently switched to visual studio code as well. I did not know about the z80 macro asm extension so I'll give that a try as well.

Par Rataplan

Champion (354)

01-06-2019, 19:56

Louthrax wrote:

Rataplan wrote:

Out of curiosity, what's different with Notepad++ in Windows 10? I use it daily as my main editor for batch, vbscript, powershell and the like. I never noticed any difference compared to Win7?

Have not tried with Notepad++, but with UltraEdit, the mouse scrolling has become super-sluggish, and the icons are super-small when using a modern 4K screen.

Sorry, not sure how I misread Notepad++ for UltraEdit.