Configuring Kate for use as a Uzebox IDE

Kate is the official text editor of the KDE project but you can run it under any Linux/UNIX desktop environment or window manager and it is also available for Windows and MacOS. It can be configured to operate as an IDE for Uzebox development, allowing you to quickly build and run your Uzebox project from within Kate via cuzebox.

Install kate, konsole and cuzebox. You need to be running at least Ubuntu 20.04 for Kate to support running external tools, if you're a Ubuntu user.

Open Kate then go to Settings -> Plugins and enable the Build and External Tools plugins.

Whilst you still have the Configure Kate window open, go to the External Tools section then click Add -> Add tool from defaults -> Tools -> Run Shell script.

You will now see a new entry in the External Tools list. Edit it so the name is Run YOURPROJECT, the executable is cuzebox, the argument is your projects .uze file name and set the working directory to the same as you set the projects build target dir.

Click on the Build Output tab at the bottom of the Kate window then click on the Create new set of targets icon.

Enter the base build directory for your current project (where the Makefile is) in the top cell of the second column.

Now you can go to Settings -> Configure Keyboard Shortcuts and assign keyboard shortcuts to the Build Default Target action (I use Alt+d for Default builD) and your Run YOURPROJECT external tool to run cuzebox running your code. I use Alt+x for eXecuting that.

If you are working on multiple projects then Kate's keyboard shortcuts window also supports creating and switching between several keyboard shortcut schemes.