FairCom's c-tree Plus

The installation is a snap—just follow the Installation & Quick Start Guide. First, run tar -xvf /dev/fd0 for each of the two Unix floppies that come in the box. Then run tar -xvf ctreeX.tar to unpack the sources—yes, you get the full c-tree Plus source code. FairCom provides its own make programs to walk you through the build process. It's in this area that FairCom could do a little better. I found the process of compiling the make program—running the mtmake configurations utility which sets up the compiler flags, then running FairCom's make program, mk--a little tedious. Especially when you have to repeat the last steps three times if you want the stand-alone, multi-user and client/server mode libraries. In addition you may want to edit the ctree.mak file by hand and add your favorite compiler flags. I added -O and -Wall--yes, I'm paranoid and like to see lots of warning messages. On the plus side their make programs will work the same on any platform.

FairCom's c-tree Plus is a proven winner that's been around for a long time (since 1979). It's a wonderful base to build serious business applications. And with FairCom's per developer, not per platform, license a Linux system c-tree is a very cost-effective, cross-platform development tool.

The Linux community needs more professional development tools like this. If you are a professional or “wanna be” professional developer looking to build mission critical business applications, I highly recommend that you take a look at c-tree Plus and its report generator and 4GL companions r-tree and d-tree. You can get more information at http://www.faircom.com/.