Requesting advice about compile developping choice.

[jokoon]

Hello

I have explored a lot of alternatives on how to make something playable, from OGRE to modding half life 2, and even ioquake source.

I have some questions since I'm not a huge fan of working with IDEs, and since irrlicht is usable with almost all platform and I have all systems, OSX, Windows and Linux. (I say all but don't talk me about BeOS or amiga or solaris -_- hehe).

I am quite used to compiling with standard GCC and never did any true stuff with an IDE, would it be dev cpp, Microsoft's Visual or code block or Apple's Xcode, and I want to know some simple thing.

Is it possible to begin compiling and linking irrlicht with just GCC ? Apple Xcode deliver a version of GCC, and it does quite the same thing than a standard linux distribution...

I'm not an anti IDE guy or such noob than learned and stuck with his beloved bash terminal, I just want to know if it is possible.

I'm so lost with an IDE, and I am very used to the text editor / terminal couple, and it has been several weeks I have been wondering if an IDE is required to build irrlicht (or other engines like ogre, but I won't use ogre for now).

Please don't flame or troll, I just want to know, and yes I'm more a begginner in programming than a c++ jedi or else.

[Sylence]

Yes you can compile anything without an IDE, but in my experience an IDE simplifies things a lot.
An IDE keeps track of which files belongs to your project and which projects are needed to compile yours, and more things.

[jokoon]

And if I want to make an easily portable code it can be either compilable to work on windows or some mac osx or unix system, what IDE should I use ?

Code block seems fine, but maybe devcpp is good too ?

By the way I am not a c++ wizard, but is the mingw compiler reliable and does it create quality windows compiled code, so should I use it, or should I make code block use the microsoft compiler instead ?

I don't know if there are differences between a windows executable compiled with mingw and one compiled with visual, and if there drawbacks...

I prefer making a game that can work in all systems that camp an os in particular.

Should I go on codeblocks ?

[lulzfish]

I think dev-cpp might be Windows-only, go for Code::Blocks.
MinGW works decently, but you should probably use the Visual Studio compiler if you already have it. I don't think MinGW is known for being well-maintained.

[d3jake]

dev-cpp is a fine program, however it's windows-only and outdated. I used to use dev-cpp, but when I found Code::Blocks and tried it a second time I swtiched to it as it was multi-platform, and still being updated.

[jokoon]

Okay so I'll go for code block...

Next step will be for me to convert some collada file from a sketchup file, sketchup is so easy to use, I'll hope there is not any drawback for using it within irrlicht ?

[randomMesh]

I use Eclipse on both Linux and Windows. It's a high quality, open source IDE from IBM. It uses MinGW on Windows, so gcc is not a problem.