The debugger itself is quite advanced. Though it uses a command-level GDB in the background, it provides all the tools a programmer would expect. You can check variable values by just pointing at them, you can inspect memory locations, and you can monitor register values.

Source-Navigator lists C, C++, Java, Cobol, and Fortran as the languages it can handle. While I didn’t check for Cobol and Fortran, I checked for the others. The GNU Java compiler and the Java packages, which are included with the product, are only Java 1.1 compliant. Only a couple of Java 2 packages are included. But in any case, compiling and using Java straightaway from within the Source-Navigator isn’t very simple. It doesn’t seem to have a virtual machine, so you’d still have to rely on an external JDK port like Blackdown. I still haven’t figured out why I should use GNU Java, which isn’t complete as ported in CodeFusion.

Version control is implemented using external tools. Again, this is not one of the strong points of CodeFusion, but it isn’t a weak point either. You can have good version control with a bit of effort.

The real significance of CodeFusion is bringing ease of development to the Linux platform. Though Borland has announced the port of C++ builder and Delphi RAD tools to Linux, they’ll take a while in coming. In the meanwhile, there’s no reason why Linux can’t be a platform for serious application development. CodeFusion provides a developer with the necessary tools to start coding in Linux today.

It has a companion in GNUPro DevKit. This is a set of GNU development tools, combined without an integrating program like Source-Navigator. It also contains the visual debugger. GNUPro is priced lower than CodeFusion and takes about 25 MB less space.

Code Fusion is available from:

G T Enterprises 913 14th Main, 4th Cross, Maruthi Circle, Hanumanthanagar, Bangalore 560019. Tel: 80-6671407 Fax: 6606093 E-mail: gtcdrom@vsnl.com
Website: www. gtcdrom.com.