Possible IDE?

[NexusDude]

I'm looking for a freeware IDE and some instructions on how to create a simple and basic image of my own.

I'd like to control the GPIO pins and maybe experiment a bit with some UART communication.

I'm a hardware engineering student and have a bit of experience with MCUs. I just got my PINE last week, but had no luck in finding a proper tutorial or guide on how to fully control all the of the cool PINE features.

I saw that it may be possible using an eclipse based platform for ARM devices called DS-5, but once installed it didn't offer anything more than a empty editor and no explanations.

Any advice at all would be great!

It'd be nice if something were installed with the images, like IDLE on Raspbian, I believe.

I see in this tread two sings mixed up:
- One compile an image from scratch
- Second program the GPIO/Euler

I think you want something like Mate Desktop with an IDE?

The OP mentioned both those things, true. The replies focus on the freeware IDE / GPIO end of things, which is my main interest (although knowing how to compile an image could be handy).

I want to learn how to use the GPIO and other pins. Can I just apply whatever works on the RPi directly to the Pine64, or is there some different driver or configuration file I would need?

EDIT: Edit: OK, this post is a good source for the below question. 

For example, in Python, can I just code as follows?

Code:

import RPi.GPIO as GPIO
GPIO.setup(18, GPIO.OUT)
etc.

Or does there need to be a Pine64.GPIO object to import, and maybe I'd need to convert pine 18 to 72, as per the Pine64 pinout?