Integrated development environment

For a long time and still somewhat today, IDEs are used more commonly in Windows environments than on Unix-like environments. A notable exception is Apple platforms. IDEs have been popular on classic Mac OS and macOS, dating back to Macintosh Programmer's Workshop, Turbo Pascal, THINK Pascal and THINK C environments of the mid-1980s. Currently, macOS programmers can choose between native IDEs like Xcode and third-party tools such as Eclipse, Netbeans and ActiveState Komodo.

Instead of using an IDE, developing software for a Unix-like environment often involves using various command-line tools such as the GNU toolchain (including GCC, GDB, and make) and an text editor such as Emacs or Vim. Some programmers prefer managing makefiles (and similar build files) over the build configuration experience presented by an IDE. For example, most contributors to the PostgreSQL database use make and GDB directly. Even when building PostgreSQL for Windows via Visual C++, Perl scripts are used as a replacement for make rather than relying on any IDE features. Some Linux IDEs such as Geany attempt to provide a graphical front end to traditional build operations. Data Display Debugger is graphical front-end for many text-based debugger tools.