Setting up Eclipse for other programming languages

Question

I have installed Eclipse (Helios) for the Java programming language, but I also want to use it for programming in C/C++, Python and Ruby. I've installed CDT and DLTK (for Python and Ruby).

I already had mingw-w64 (Windows platform) installed. How do I set up Eclipse so that it uses MinGW as the toolchain? It apparently detects MinGW as a toolchain, but when I create a project, two warnings already appear saying "error launching external scanner info generator". I'm assuming this is because it can't find the compiler program. Also, it doesn't detect any of the standard-library header files. Could these problems be because I'm using mingw-w64 rather than the standard MinGW?

I have Ruby working, but as for Python, it cannot find the interpreter nor the default system library. I have Python 2.7 already installed. I don't know how to tell Eclipse where to look for the files.

Note: I am on Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. I've heard of people on 64-bit versions of Vista having trouble getting mingw-w64 to work. I may be having the same problem. Ignoring Eclipse, when I try to compile a C file using gcc, it has trouble finding the libraries and includes.

Edit: If I set the path to /bin/ and /libexec/ via environmental variables, I don't get the initial errors when creating a project, but, what I want to know is, how could I set the paths via Eclipse? Also, even if I set the paths, the linker still can't find the libraries and includes. I went to Project > Properties > C/C++ Build > Settings and tried to set the libraries and includes that way, but it still couldn't find them (the libraries, at least)! Moreover, would I really have to do this for every project? This option isn't available in Window > Preferences.

Answer 1

As for the python part, I recommend using pydev: http://pydev.org/ It's the best eclipse plugin for python. From code completion, syntax highlighting, virtualenv support (http://pydev.blogspot.com/2010/04/pydev-and-virtualenv.html) and so on...

If you are into web development, from javascript, php, html, python, ruby... you also might want to take a look at aptana.

http://www.aptana.com/ It's a eclipse based IDE with lots of goodies working out of thebox, like git and subversion plugins, pydev etc... aptana is (or was, I switched IDE) installable as a plugin in a regular eclipse)

Martin K. link looks good for mingw part.