KDevelop: so much promise, but a bit rough around the edges

I’ve been trying to put together an app using KDevelop as my IDE. IDE-wise, it seems fine: all the usual stuff like syntax highlighting (of course) and code completion, etc. But I find its handling of the gnu autotools a bit rough.

I haven’t found a way yet to specify a build order for files, or better yet, identify source/includes generated by the build process. This means, for instance, that I need to make sure that my .y (bison source) file is before my .l (flex source) file in the compile, so that bison can run and output the include file to define symbols for flex.

Another sticking point is the fact that I can’t seem to get KDevelop to properly define libraries to link against. When I list them as required in the project options, the make fails with e.g. “no rule to make ‘cppunit'”.

I’ve got around both of these issues by manually hacking the Makefile.am, but it’s not very promising for future productivity.

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