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I think most of the ROS developer are not using an IDE to develop. Personally, I am using emacs but there is also a lot of vim users around me.

So the answer to your question is:

• I open the file I need in emacs
• Yes. Writing your CMakeLists.txt manually help you prune the unnecessary dependencies.
• To debug, I use rxconsole (or rqt in Hydro) and I write launch file with test scenarii to help the process. Then I log using rosbag or I play around using the service and message introspection tools to help me understand what is going on. Of course classical tools such as gdb and valgrind also comes handy.
  • Each node should be first tested separately. If you provide the right input (using a rosbag or rostopic pub) then you can check that the output is correct. Then you can have different launch files aggregating slowly more and more components.

On the other side if you want to use an IDE, CMake can generate solution for many popular software. The CMake documentation detail this process. Once this is done, you can use your favorite IDE like usual.