IDE for realtime collaboration that works with C/C++, C#, .Net

Luca Tenuta picture Luca Tenuta · Oct 5, 2012 · Viewed 7.4k times · Source

I'm looking for an IDE that I can collaborate with other people. I'd like to have real-time editing and color coordination (meaning if Bob is online and changes some code it will high lite his changes, similar to sharing a Document on Google).

I've tried searching via Google but I can't find anything that actually suits my needs. I'm currently a college student and have projects to do with other class mates, but using Pastebin is a bit cumbersome as I have to have an IDE open + a web browser, then copy paste, share etc.

Is there any IDE out there that will compile for C/C++, C#, .Net etc with real-time collaboration? If I have to set up a server on my desktop to make it work I have no problems doing so

Answer

Basile Starynkevitch picture Basile Starynkevitch · Oct 5, 2012

I believe that in practical terms, using a distributed versioning system (like git, perhaps thru gitorious or github) is a wiser idea, at least for usual programming languages like C (and you need a social convention, at least like Bob is working on file foo.c or on function foofoo while Alice focuses on bar.c or on function barbar). You may want to communicate in real time using IRC, chat, pastebin, etc .... in addition of git. You probably won't edit the same line (or perhaps even the same function) two distant people at a time.

The semantics of programming language like C is not fit to the idea of a simultanous edition of a single source at the very same time. (Defining languages friendly to this co-development idea is still a research topic).

BTW, you don't need an IDE to code in C or C++ (especially on Linux, which gives you a lot of other tools emacs or perhaps vim or gedit or geany, grep, make, ctags, git, awk, ... to use together). A big lot of very large C or C++ free software programs (GCC, the Linux kernel, Gnome/GTK, Qt/KDE, LibreOffice ....) are coded by many qualified people without IDEs. This is IMHO quite significant.