The IDE on Linux: early release available

The IDE is the Integrated Development Environment. It works in concert with a windowing system called Common Graphics. It has been available on MicroSoft Windows machines since its inception. It is now available, in a very early release form, on x86 Linux platforms running Allegro CL 7.0.

The Common Graphics and the IDE are described in doc/cgide.htm (which points to the rest of the CG/IDE documentation). That is also the documentation for the Linux version. However, many things in this early release do not work properly (or at all) yet.

The purpose of this early release is to allow CG/IDE users on Windows to test their programs on Linux. We do not expect applications to come up immediately, or to work wholly as expected. But we do hope for feedback that will allow us to distinguish between minor problems and major ones, allow us to focus our future efforts most productively, and allow us to be confident that we are on the correct development path. (While we expect users with existing applications on Windows to be the primary users of the early release Linux version, all users of Allegro CL 7.0 on x86 Linux machines are welcome to try out the software. It is available to all 7.0 Linux x86 users.)

It is our intention to put out new and improved versions as soon as they become available and to update the associated release-notes with each new code release. For this reason, the names of the download files and the name of the associated release-notes document cannot be given and we cannot provide a direct link here. (Each update will have a different filename, with at a minimum the version number incrementing. Since updates will be frequent, a link will quickly become stale or point to an out-of-date document.)

Instead, users should go to the download information page [This link has been removed. The Linux IDE is part of Allegro CL 8.0.]. There is a link at the bottom of that page, under the heading Download, to the actual download page. On the actual download page, there is a link to download the software and a link to view the current release-notes (the release-notes are also included in the download). Installation instructions are on the download information page [This link has been removed. The Linux IDE is part of Allegro CL 8.0.].

We wish to emphasize again the preliminary nature of this release. All users are urged to read the release-notes (see above for information on obtaining the release-notes and for reasons why we cannot provide a link from here). If you find when testing or using the software that something does not work as expected or at all, check the release-notes to see if it is a known problem.

We are hoping that users who try out this early release will be generous with their comments, complaints, and problem reports (which should be sent to [email protected], with `LINUX IDE' included in the subject line). That is how we can most quickly and efficiently move from this early release to a production-quality product that will allow application interfaces to be the same on Windows and on Linux (and, later, on other UNIX platforms).