Official Free Tools Thread

[Chiefcrowe]

http://www.microsoft.com/web/webmatrix/

Website development / publishing program

sorry if it's a repost

 

[Oyster]

I don't know if this fits here or in the "free References" sticky. Regardless, it is an awesome resource. Probably could go under "Other Utilities."

http://www.regexlib.com/
Regular Expression Library - community-based collection of regularly used regexes. Website rates regexes, allows testing regexes based on the .NET RegEx engine, and has active members who will answer any regex-related questions.

 

[donosemihai]

I would like to recommend for Databases and Tools
Platform: Windows, MAC, Linux x86, Unix
DbSchema (http://www.dbschema.com)

 

[Pia]

Here's some things I have found useful with very large codebases. All go in File Utilities.

FreeCommander
Platform: Windows
More data: http://www.freecommander.com/
Powerful file manager, configurable. For instance, makes it easy to launch a diff utility for files that are in different folders.

WinMerge
Platform: Windows
Diff/merge.

FileLocator Lite
Platform: Windows
More data: http://www.mythicsoft.com/page.aspx?type=filelocatorlite&page=home
Find files efficiently.

 

[Markbnj]

Thread updated. All links checked and adjusted. All version information updated. Recent contris added. Sorry it took so long to get to this maintenance.

 

[imot]

Google Web Toolkit
Java to JavaScript compiler enables using Java developer tools (debugger, IDE) to create web-applications.

 

[Markbnj]

Google Web Toolkit
Java to JavaScript compiler enables using Java developer tools (debugger, IDE) to create web-applications.

Thanks for stopping by. GWT is already listed under Web Programming.

 

[beginner99]

Web Development

DataTables:
http://datatables.net/

DataTables is a plug-in for the jQuery Javascript library. It is a highly flexible tool, based upon the foundations of progressive enhancement, which will add advanced interaction controls to any HTML table

This one is very handy! Simple out of the box usage but with configuration and additional plug-ins very powerful:

Display data from almost any data source
* DOM, Javascript array, Ajax file and server-side processing (PHP, C#, Perl, Ruby, AIR, Gears etc)



Testing

http://www.dbunit.org/

DbUnit is a JUnit extension (also usable with Ant) targeted at database-driven projects that, among other things, puts your database into a known state between test runs. This is an excellent way to avoid the myriad of problems that can occur when one test case corrupts the database and causes subsequent tests to fail or exacerbate the damage.

DbUnit has the ability to export and import your database data to and from XML datasets. Since version 2.0, DbUnit can also work with very large datasets when used in streaming mode. DbUnit can also help you to verify that your database data match an expected set of values

Source Control

Mercurial: http://mercurial.selenic.com/

For Windows user I can recommend:
http://tortoisehg.bitbucket.org/
Windows shell extension for Mercurial)

Mercurial is similar to Git. Mercurial Projects can be hosted on

https://bitbucket.org/

Store all of your Git and Mercurial source code in one place with unlimited private repositories. Includes issue tracking, wiki, and pull requests.

Secure hosting with flexible permissions for your repositories. Integrates with JIRA, Jenkins, Pivotal, Cloud9 IDE and other developer tools.

Mercurial and Bitbucket usage is very simple. Can be highly recommended for people new to (distributed) source control. Also Mercurial can be directly used from within Netbeans.

 

[think2]

Uncrustify - source code beautifier for C like languages

http://uncrustify.sourceforge.net/

Code editor pspad
http://www.pspad.com/

 

[Net]

A pastebin that has several IDE keyboard shortcuts and behaviors

http://commitcode.com

 

[MadHacker]

CodeMaid
An open source visual studio extension to cleanup, dig through and simplify our C#, C++, XAML, XML, ASP, HTML, CSS and JavaScript coding
http://www.codemaid.net/

Use it all the time.

 

[Cogman]

http://www.sonarsource.org/

We are using this at my current place of employ, and I must say, I'm pretty impressed with how well it catches potential problems.

Sonar is a static analysis tool for Java. It catches things like potential null pointer dereferencing, == for object comparison, etc.

It is really pretty powerful, and free.

 

[Fayd]

special purpose: statistics

R (r-project.org)
Rstudio (rstudio.org)

 

[pub1279]

Although joomla/droopal was there but no ecommerce specific software (some other listed as well):

Zencart
Platform: windows, unix
More data: http://sourceforge.net/projects/zencart/files/
Open source shopping cart software


Active Perl
Platform: windows, mac, linux
More data: http://www.activestate.com/activeperl/downloads/
Perl compiler for windows



Auto It Scripting
Platform: windows
More data: http://www.autoitscript.com/site/autoit/
Windows scripting tool to create self-contained installers/software packagings for mass distribution

 

[sunilmkt]

Hi Markbnj,

You did fantastic work. I checked you free tools list and did not find any tool missing. Mostly popular freeware tools covered here, this could be helpful me as well as others users and can find the solutions in one place. Great !!!

 

[hasu]

Some more very interesting stuff:
Since things are free in Linux World, I will list only Windows stuff.

1. An IDE for Multi platform Rapid Application Development

Lazarus (http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/) - Open source
(CodeTyphon is Lazarus with many components pre-installed)

2. MySQL Database query tool (Opensource).
HeidiSQL (http://www.heidisql.com/)

3. Screen capture for screenshots and annotations for writing manuals etc:
http://www.picpick.org/en/

 

[code65536]

PEBrowse Professional (note: not PEBrowse64)
http://www.smidgeonsoft.com/pebrowse-pro-file-viewer.html
This is my favorite executable analysis tool. Lets you view all the details of an EXE or DLL--headers, resources, imports/exports, etc.--and it has a fairly nice disassembler. Get PEBrowse, not PEBrowse64--the name of the latter suggests that it's just a 64-bit version of the former, but it's not: it's actually a very different (and, IMHO, inferior) program. Anyway, PEBrowse (not 64) can handle all μarchs: x86-32, x86-64, and IA-64 (and probably ARM, too).

 

[ultimatebob]

I would include links to

VMWare Player http://www.vmware.com/player and

VirtualBox https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads as well.

Developers need a test VM for try out their code... don't they?

 

[ejjpi]

if you are a web developer firebug (https://getfirebug.com/) and chrome web tools (https://developers.google.com/chrome-developer-tools/) are absolutely a must.

 

[Ken g6]

To that I would add Firefinder for Firebug. Why did my CSS expression include that element? Or why didn't it?

 

[Markbnj]

This list is woefully out of date. I need to take a pass through it, but honestly I am not sure it's possible to have one that is really up to date and relevant any more.

 

[Gerry Rzeppa]

I would like to submit the following for the "IDE's, Compilers, and Editors" section:

a) www.osmosian.com or www.osmosian.com/cal-3040.zip
b) www.osmosian.com/instructions.pdf
c) The Osmosian Plain English Development System (The CAL-3040)
d) Windows IDE and compiler
e) A Plain English IDE and compiler and written entirely in Plain English.

Thanks!

 

[Tr4nd]

This list is amazing! Thanks for all the hard work

 

[brocks]

http://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/visual-studio-community-vs

MS has a new free version of Visual Studio that is supposed to be equivalent to VS Pro, i.e. it has all the languages and platforms, for non-enterprise developers (as I understand it, commercial development is OK, but only if you're a very small shop, or independent).

 

[TahirMarfani]

Cygwin could be a Linux-like surroundings for Windows. It consists of 2 parts:
- A DLL (cygwin1.dll) that acts as a UNIX system API emulation layer providing substantial UNIX system API practicality.
- a set of tools which give UNIX system look and feel.

The Cygwin DLL presently works with all recent, commercially discharged x86 thirty two bit and sixty four bit versions of Windows, with the exception of Windows cerium.

I use it for collection C in windows. Works with visual percept.