eC (eCere) new programming language with 2D and 3D built-in library

[deed]

Hi,

First time I post here, although from time to time I used to visit these forums as I am interested in progamming languages, graphics and sounds.

I wonder if any of you ever heard of ecere (or eC), a new programming language along with a full environment (IDE and libraries) : http://www.ecere.com

Looks quite promising, but I didn't have enough time to test it. Anyway, it looks like a good solution for someone that would like to have a full integrated environment to start with. Basically, it claims to have the power of C with the object capabilities of Java, without the hassle of C++, and with a native IDE, native cross platform GUI, and embedded 2D and 3D libraries, with both DirectX and OpenGL bind.

[taj]

Nice first post. It looks very interesting. The principle of removing class overhead such as reference counting to make classes really = structs is one makes using with C much easier. The runtime engine worries me a little - could be slow. Otherwise, nice find. Anyone used it? If not I might try it.

Hope you stick around and this isnt just an "advertise and run" post.

[deed]

Hope you stick around and this isnt just an "advertise and run" post.

Well, all I can say that I am not affiliated with the eCere corporation, in any way If I have the opportunity to make other constructive posts I'll do it, but I am so lazy I am afraid it'd be difficult for me to do better than a link to a useful resource from time to time

[Shockwave]

eCere looks pretty interesting, especially as it has support for Opengl and Directx.
I'm not sure how suitable it would be for small applications like demos.

[jerstlouis]

Hey guys, just noticed this discussion and saying hi...

I'm the main developer and I'll be happy to answer any question or discuss anything about Ecere with you guys, either here, on FreeNode #ecere, or on our own forums

Of course I encourage everybody to give it a try and I'm here for free support =)

Regards,

Jerome


P.S. Taj what were you referring to "The runtime engine worries me a little - could be slow. " ?

eC is fully compatible with C, so any C code will run exactly as C code would... and specific eC features are also compiled just like C (using C as an intermediate language for now) and are not managed or running under a virtual machine or any of the like...

I hope this reassure you

[benny!]

Hi Jerstlouis,

just downloaded the SDK - and all I can say is WOW !
This productions looks really solid and cool  - even
if it is just in version 0.41.

The syntax looks very clean and simple. Reminds me a bit
on C#.

The IDE is not too bloated and if someone worked with
Microsofts Visual Suite - it is very easy to configure your
projects. Didn't test the Visual Designer yet.

All in all, this could be a choice for everyone. For ppl who
are afraid of C/C++ programming - and for ppl who are used
to C/C++ but need a RAD for prototyping or fast productions.

One question : I browsed through your homepage and didnt
find a license model ? Can you give some info about that ?
And since it is in V0.41 - what is the roadmap for upcoming
versions ?

Thanks a lot for this interesting link!

//EDIT:
Ahh ... just saw it on the start page of your site :
It's is free !!! Even more cool ;-)

[jerstlouis]

Hi bennyl!

I'm glad you got a good first impression of Ecere hehe

On the first page (www.ecere.com) you can read the following:


Licensing Information: The Ecere SDK is completely free, and applications built with it can be distributed both commercially and non commercially, along with the supporting Ecere runtime library.

Please tell me if you saw that or not and if I need to make it more obvious
I thought the red color was enough, but hey I don't pretend to be a web designer

If your question is if there is a longer license model, the answer is no right now, and the source code is not currently widely open.
I am however considering a BSD license for the whole project, and waiting mostly to achieve a few more milestones / clean up the code a bit before we get there. The code is of course available for people interested to contribute to the project.

Concerning the roadmap, let me just say the project is very much active. We're currently designing templates in eC, many improvements to the IDE are also under way. I'm also writing a programmer's guide (www.ecere.com/tao.pdf). A database integration system is also under way, among many other things of course

[Paul]

Hi jerstlouis!
Looks really cool, so i had a go at it.
Unfortunately i had a few problems...
First i got this error when compiling helloworld.ec: "gcc: installation problem, cannot exec `cc1': No such file or directory     ".
But after moving cc1.exe to ECERE SDK\mingw\bin i get this error: "Fatal Error: child process terminated unexpectedly     "

I'm running vista 32 with vac turned off.

[benny!]

@jerstlouis:
I just posted a little article on my Blog.
Hope it is ok ?


@vista problem:
I tried to install it on my laptop running Vista. Unfortunately
the installer hangs on 54% and then stops without any
warning. Very strange.

On my XP system everything runs fine.

[jerstlouis]

Gotta hate Vista 

There's a thread on the Ecere forums about Vista problems, but no solution yet hehe
I don't run Vista personally...

http://www.ecere.com/Vanilla/comments.php?DiscussionID=27&page=1#Item_3

But this relates mostly to executing MinGW more than Ecere.
It might be a user permission thing?

EDIT: You can execute the Ecere build process from within the command prompt by running make as such:

make -f Project-Debug.Makefile

This will give you more information than "Fatal Error: child process terminated unexpectedly"

Assuming you first opened the project and attempted to build it or explicitly doing Project / Regenerate Makefile.

The following links are possible solutions:

http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=67297
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2007-05/msg00219.html
http://aarongiles.com/?p=199

"In summary:

    Fix #1: Set the environment variable GCC_EXEC_PREFIX to point to the root of your mingw install.
    Fix #2: Add %GCC_EXEC_PREFIX%\libexec\gcc\mingw32\3.4.2 to your search PATH.

Edit: I got a response from someone who said this didn’t work. Turns out that GCC_EXEC_PREFIX only works if it points to a directory immediately off the root of your hard disk for some reason. So c:\mingw works fine, but c:\tools\mingw won’t. You may have to alter the locations of your mingw directory to make this work."

Let me know if you guys do get it to work, I'll post a solution on our Vista thread.

I'm really wondering why the installer hangs, I never heard anything about that before :S
Might be a permission thing again?

What's vac btw?

Thanks for the Blog post bennyl
And of course thanks deed for this forum post

Cheers

Jerome

[Paul]

wops, meant uac, user account control, what vista has to limit application privileges.
Hope we find a solution because i really want to try this

[jerstlouis]

Yeah I was blaming UAC

But if you say it's disabled... Paul do you have IRC?
Care to join #ecere on irc.freenode.net so I can help you get it rolling?

[Shockwave]

Have some good karma Jerstlouis, it's always nice to see a developer who cares about supporting his userbase Especially as the environment is provided free, gratis and for nothing.

[jerstlouis]

Thanks Shockwave
I've always been a big fan of demos, since the FC days =)
I remember seeing Second Reality run on the computers when I bought my first own PC, a 486 DX2 66 MHz

The Balls sample coming with the SDK is inspired from it =)
(http://www.ecere.com/balls.png)

Making demos has always been something I've wanted to do with Ecere, but haven't gotten around to it yet...
I hope to get the chance in 2008 to revamp the Ecere 3D engine to the state of the art =)

[Paul]

Thx for your offer jerstlouis, but i got it working
First(dont know if this step is necessary) i installed a new candidate version of mingw under ECERE SDK\mingw.
Then I downloaded this http://dessent.net/tmp/gcc-vista-3.4.5-20060117-1.tar.gz and unpacked(with winrar) in the same folder... and it worked

I got the tip from this topic http://forums.ps2dev.org/viewtopic.php?p=55772#55772 over at ps3dev.org


Edit:
Tried some of the samples, both the chess and clock are good.

Edit2:
I installed the candidate version of mingw, not the ordinary version as i wrote first.

[jerstlouis]

Awesome Paul...

I'll post something in my Vista thread about all these solutions.
I'll also try to include these fixes and test it on Vista for the next release...

Clock is cool, it's a windowless thing, did you try ColorSpheres too? that one is pretty slick...

http://www.ecere.com/blog/2007/10/21/some-3d-desktop-toys/

Glad you got compiling working. Hopefully you get inspired to try coding in eC