Basically I want to compile C/C++ using the GCC on Windows. The two competing platforms, as i see it, are MinGW and Cygwin. Each have their own benifits and limitations. MinGW compiles for Windows, whereas Cygwin needs the cygwin .dll. However installing libraries on MinGW is difficult, whereas on cygwin it's easier, using the setup.exe as a 'package manager'.
My question is what's the best way to compile on Windows. Would it be better to use MinGW and struggle with libraries (in which case is there an easy way of installing libraries on MinGW). Or should I use Cygwin, if so how do I get it to compile without needing the cygwin .dll, effectively compile for normal Windows.
The easiest and best way to compile on windows is to use visual studio express. It is free. A good reason for using cygwin is for cross platform builds. A good reason to use gcc is it supports some compiler candy the Microsoft compiler doesn't.
But all in all VC++ Express is the way to go for windows only development.
There is always the option of using -mno-cygwin with Cygwin to compile against Windows libraries like MinGW does:
gcc -mno-cygwin file.c -o test
It's not an easy choice and mainly depends on how much you will rely on other libraries. Cygwin really adds an additional layer, which is heavier but "emulates" the Linux environment better than MinGW.
Edit:
Qt Creator allows you to compile with MinGW on Windows (and gcc on Linux, ...), has an IDE that makes debugging more friendly than gdb. If you need libraries, you still have the option of using the Qt libraries. That would be a good alternate solution to the Visual Studio if you really want to stick to gcc for future portability.
You might want to look at CodeBlocks. It is generally used to build WxWidgets apps, but it wraps MinGW nicely.
Actually, there's option #3: if your edition of Windows permits it, you can install Microsoft Services For Unix / Subsystem for Unix Applications, and then get gcc from SUACommunity. It has a package manager, too. Of those 3 options, this will give you behavior closest to a true Unix system.
However, the resulting applications aren't Win32 applications; they're SUA applications, and will require SUA to run. If you write code for yourself, it's usually not a problem if you write code for yourself, but if you want to write and distribute a proper Windows application, I would suggest staying away from anything that tries to emulate Unix, so MinGW it is.
Qt Creator comes with MinGW as standard and can be used to build projects that don't actually use the Qt framework.
There's an easy to install MinGW wrapped GCC at equation.com.
Click "Programming Tools" then "Fortran, C, C++", download the release you prefer, install and use.
One possible method is to use CMake which can build Visual Studio project from your sources and then compile from Visual Studio. It can build project for other IDEs too, so you can go cross platform.
I think the answer depends on whether you intend to use libraries or compile programs that are targeted to POSIX or a POSIX-based target. That's what Cygwin is intended for, while MinGW is more intended for compiling Windows-targeted programs using GCC.
Another option is TDM MinGW: http://www.tdragon.net/recentgcc/
It's basically an unofficial fork of MinGW with the latest GCC compiler available for both 32- and 64bit windows machines. Even some MinGW developers themselves use it.
Equation Gcc is even better: http://www.equation.com/servlet/equation.cmd?fa=fortran
Related
Qt and Code blocks download package have their MinGW compiler. And there's standalone MinGW itself. Is there any difference between them?
Can I use Qt's MinGW to build Code blocks project or vice versa?
Did I need another MinGW if i want to build C++ project without Qt Creator or Code Blocks?
Or, can I just use Qt's or Code Blocks' MinGW without standalone version of MinGW?
Both Qt Creator and CodeBlocks just bundle a version of MinGW (GCC) in their installations for convenience, so that users don't have to install it and configure it manually. In both cases, you can choose to download or install the IDE without installing MinGW (GCC), in which case, you need to configure the IDE to use whatever compiler you want it to use (which not only can be any standalone MinGW/GCC installation, but also any other compiler, including MSVC (Microsoft compiler), ICC (Intel's compiler), or Clang).
Here are instructions to configure a custom compiler for Qt Creator. And here are instructions for CodeBlocks.
Is there any difference between them?
As far as I know, there is no significant difference between them, except for the version, of course. IDEs that are bundled with MinGW-GCC will typically come with one particular (and often a bit older / more stable) version of it. When you install a standalone MinGW-GCC, it can be whatever version you choose. There are differences between versions, but usually not anything that would "break" code, just faster / better compilations or additional advanced features (which are not used by "default" projects in any case).
Can I use Qt's MinGW to build Code blocks project or vice versa?
I'm pretty sure you can. I don't see any reason why not. Of course, you have to get the configuration right, as per the instructions I linked to above.
Did I need another MinGW if i want to build C++ project without Qt Creator or Code Blocks?
If you want to build things outside of an IDE that is configured with a particular compiler or installation of MinGW, then you will have to make sure to setup a few things. This process is easier when doing a standalone installation of MinGW, but you can also figure out how to take an existing MinGW installation (that came from Qt / CodeBlocks) and make it work under CMD / PowerShell / MSYS, but it's a bit trickier and more unusual.
I have some question about cygwin :
Can I use Cygwin develop socket based code?
Does Cygwin have read() and write() functions that work with file descriptors?
Can I use Pthread library in Cygwin?
Does code that compiles in Cygwin also
compile in Linux without any change or with little change?
Will an executable file that built by
Cygwin run in Linux ?
Why does Cygwin not need the linker
option -lpthread when I use pthread library?
why in #include <iostream> don't I need to use using namespace std; ?
Can I work with QT in Cygwin? If so,How?
Can I boot my Linux in other
partition with Cygwin and use it?
Can I access the other partition
that is EXT3 in Cygwin?
On 1:
Yes. Socket libraries are shipped with Cygwin - many socket based apps such as web servers are included in the base distribution.
On 2:
Yes. I think all of the 'section 2 and 3' system calls in the GNU C runtime and library are implemented by the cygwin runtume. You can check this in the man pages that come with Cygwin. A list of system calls and std lib calls implementd by Cygwin can be found here.
On 3: Yes. Pthread is included in Cygwin. The list referred to in the link above mentions pthreads as well.
On 4: Anything built against GNU libraries should work with little or no change between Cygwin and Linux (assuming there are no dependencies missing on Cygwin). Depending on CPU architecture you may have to worry about word alignment, endianness and other architecture-specific porting issues, but if you're targeting Windows and Linux on Intel your code would have few if any porting issues arising from CPU architecture.
On 5: Cygwin will build a program against its own shared libraries by default but GCC can cross-compile to target other platforms. You could (in theory) set GCC up to cross-compile to any target supported by the compiler. There are plenty of resources on the web about cross-compiling with GCC, and I don't think the process will be materially different on Cygwin.
Note that Cygwin binaries will not run on Linux - or Vice-versa. You will still need separate builds for both.
On 6: Not sure - at a guess it's included in the standard runtime, perhaps because it was necessary to wrap the Win32 threading API for some reason.
On 7: Don't know - it's probably the same on g++ on all platforms. Apparently a compiler bug. Dan Moulding's Answer covers this in more detail.
On 8: Yes. IIRC QT is available in the standard builds and it will certainly compile on Cygwin. As with Linux/Unix, QT on Cygwin uses an X11 backend so you will need to have an X server such as XMing running.
In order to avoid the dependency on an X server you may want to build QT apps against the Win32 API,. It is possible to do this with MinGW, which is a set of header files and libraries to build native Win32 apps with GCC. MinGW can be used from within a Cygwin environment (an example of GCC on Cygwin cross-compiling to a non-Cygwin target) and the installer from cygwin.com gives you the option of installing it.
MinGW is quite mature; it has all of the 'usual suspects' - libraries and header files you would expect to find on a Unix/Linux GCC development environment and is very stable. It
is often the tool of choice for building Win32 ports of open-source software because it is (a) free, (b) supports the libraries used by the software and (c) uses GCC so it is not affected by dialectic variations between MSVC and GCC.
However, these dialectic variations in the language and available libraries (for example MSVC doesn't come with an implementation of getopt) mean that porting programs between MinGW and MSVC can be quite fiddly. My experience - admittedly not terribly extensive as I've only done this a few times - is that porting applications between MinGW32 and Linux is easier than porting between MinGW and MSVC. Obviously apps with non-portable dependencies such as Win32 specific API usage would require the dependent components to be re-written for the new platform but you'll have far fewer problems with differences in the standard libs, header files and language dialect.
QT does a fairly good job of providing a platform abstraction layer. It provides APIs for database access, threading, I/O and many other services as well as the GUI. Using the QT APIs where possible should help with portability and the Unix/Linux flavoured libraries that come with MinGW mean that it might give you a good platform for making applications that will port between Win32 and Linux with relatively little platform dependent code.
EDIT: The qt development packages in Cygwin are:
qt4: Qt application framework (source)
qt4-devel-tools: Qt4 Assistant, Designer, and Linguist
qt4-doc: Qt4 API documentation
qt4-qtconfig: Qt4 desktop configuration app
qt4-qtdemo: Qt4 demos and examples
You'll probably also need gcc4-g++ and some other bits and pieces. This listing on the cygwin web site has a list of the packages.
"Yes" to all of those except 5. You'll have to build your executables separately for Linux, but that should be straightforward since the answer to 4 is "yes".
Make sure you install all the development headers you need on both platforms.
Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes (if you write it carefully and don't use anything specific to cygwin), No.
On 5: it may be possible to cross-compile from Cygwin to Linux, I really don't know. If it is, then technically some executables "built by Cygwin" would run on Linux. But Cygwin executables won't run on Linux.
1-4: The answers to these are all "yes", because all of these features you are asking about are part of the POSIX standard. Cygwin is basically a POSIX layer for Windows so, naturally, Cygwin includes all of these features.
5: No, Cygwin binaries will not execute under the Linux kernel, because ultimately the code generated by Cygwin is Windows native code. It will link with the usual Windows DLLs (like kernel32.dll), whereas Linux does not even have a notion of DLLs (it has shared objects which are similar, but different). More importantly, executables built under Cygwin will be in the PE format, but Linux generally uses the ELF format for executables. You could, of course, do cross-compiling under Cygwin, and thereby generate native Linux executables, but it doesn't sound like this is what you are looking for. Also, compiling a new version of GCC to use as a cross-compiler under Cygwin is probably no trivial task.
6: GCC under Cygwin doesn't require use of -lpthread because all of the pthread code under Cygwin is in cygwin1.dll which is always linked in by default.
7: This is a bug in GCC (on all platforms). It has been around for a long time and will probably never be fixed.
8: ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells did a great job of explaining this, so there's not much left for me to say. However, it's worth noting that Cygwin has the X.org X Window System in its package list. With Cygwin 1.7.x, setting it up and using it is a breeze and it seems pretty rock-solid. If you want to use Qt with X, I'd recommend using Cygwin's X server.
In response to #7, the version of the C++ compiler that you have is probably out of date. If you don't need linux/posix portability, I'd switch to the non-cygwin MinGW GCC compiler - you can get 4.4.1 at http://tdragon.net/recentgcc/
Regarding 6, you don't need -lpthread because Pthreads support is part of the Cygwin DLL.
Is there any compiler for C++ that works under W7 and is easy to install, except VC++?
I never get these scripts and linux emulations to work, and really just want to try another compiler.
The nuwen distribultion of the GCC compiler includes the compiler and all necessary supporting tools and libraries as a single Windows installer. You don't need any Linux emulation in order to use it. A similar, slightly smaller pacakage is TDM's MinGW build. Both of these are on GCC 4.5 (as of Aug-2010).
If you want an IDE, then Code::Blocks also comes as a complete system. This has recently (Jul-2010) been heavily improved, and comes with the GCC 4.4.1 compiler, if you want it. You might also want to look at CodeLite, which is also fairly easy to install.
Mingw is generally easier than cygwin. It doesn't come with a port of every unix tools as cygwin does, but the resulting .exes are native (no need for cygwin.dll)
Cygwin includes the gcc compiler and also provides a Unix look and feel which will be the other thing you need to get scripts and linux emulations to work. (This inlcude the libraries Unix libraries will have functions that VC does not have which might be the issue that you are having)
Qt for Windows comes with MingW, which I've found to be reasonably easy to use and install, and the LGPL version is priced right (free as in beer). You don't need to use any the Qt libraries in your application. I'm not sure which version of GCC is currenlty bundled with it. There are no licensing restrictions for the software you develop (unless you're actually modifying and redistributing source code of the LGPL version of Qt).
Hello I am putting together a tool chain on my windows Box for Cross Platform C++ Development. I plan on using Boost.Build for building and Boost::Test for unit testing. I will be using Mercurial for my VCS because I can just throw the repo on my external HD and then pull it to either my windows or linux partition. The main thing standing in my way is editor compiler/debugger. Anyone have any suggestions?
With Boost.Build I can technically build with whatever compilers it supports easily. That means MSVC on windows and GCC on linux by using the same script with a flag.
Qt Creator using MinGW on Windows and the GNU compiler on Linux. That's what I use and it works perfectly well. Note that you don't have to use Qt when developing with Qt Creator.
May I suggest CMake on Windows and Linux as you can generate native Visual Studio projects as well as Eclipse CDT projects and plain-old makefiles.
If you are targeting multiple platforms, but find yourself primarily developing on a single platform, I highly recommend a continuous build/integration system to ensure a check-in for one platform does not break the build on the others.
Code::Blocks is a free, open source, cross platform C++ IDE. It supports the MS and GCC compilers, among others.
The main thing standing in my way is
editor compiler/debugger. Anyone have
any suggestions?
Yes: Qt Creator as one download and install will satisfy your three requests -- pick the 'LGPL' license route and download and install the SDK which even installs gcc, g++, ... for you. The integrated debugger is very good, and you get cross-platform behavior from both your code and your tools.
you can use gcc/g++ on windows as well. as for debuggers: gdb and ddd might be in cygwin. editor: vim (beware: it's really a programmable editor, not an IDE).
Vim, gdb, gcc/g++, makefile - you can use them on both - Windows and Unix :)
Yet another vote for Code Blocks or Qt Creator.
There are commercial tools too: beside Visual Studio there are MagicC++ (IDE), debuggers like TotalView, Allinea, Zero-bugs, UndoDB ... if you want to stay with VStudio check these VSBridge and WinGDB.
Anyway you can always use MSVC on Windows and other tools on Unix (gdb/DDD for debugging, vim/emacs for edition) - I've worked in this way a lot of years. Common environment for all platforms is nice, but sometimes it is very hard (almost impossible) to "force" it in company (especially big-company) ;-)
Do I really need Visual studio to build c/C++ application on Windows.
Is there any way to have makefiles and get the application built.
You can use any compiler that'll target Windows (for example, MinGW, Digital Mars, Comeau or others). All of them can be driven by the command line so you can use your preferred make utility (or other build utility).
That said, Visual Studio is pretty nice (even the free version). And don't forget that it installs the command line compiler tools, so you can drive it from a makefile as well (unfortunately, it won't spit out a makefile for you anymore, but it has it's own command line tools to drive a build based on project settings if you want to jump from IDE to command line builds).
If you want to stick to the Microsoft toolchain but don't want the IDE, you can use cl and link to build from the command line in conjuction with either the MSBUILD system or NMAKE.
If you don't have the compiler it is available free with VC++ Express.
To install the Microsoft compiler without installing an IDE download the Windows SDK which is available for free.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_SDK
Qt is very nice, and downloading and installing the SDK gets you the QtCreator which provides a consistent IDE across platforms, with very nice builtin help, build system, access to revision control, debugging, ... and it even includes the MinGW compiler and toolchain for you.
MinGW is something simpler: the usual GNU toolchain but setup such that it provides native Windows binary.
Last but not least, there is Cygwin which gives you the most Unixy flavour.
No, you don't.
I know you said c, but you can also check out MonoDevelop, should you choose to do more than just that: http://monodevelop.com/Download
No you do not. There are many free IDE's out there, or you can do everything from the command line with a non-microsoft compiler.
www.bloodshed.net offers a pretty good IDE that uses the Mingw compiler.
You can even do without extra tools as long as you have the compilers on your machine. Take a look here for an explainatin:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms235639.aspx
Not at all. It is quite possible to do Win32 programing, including OS and GUI programming, with gcc from Mingw.
For all my hobby work, if I can I use the gcc compiler from Mingw (for C or Ada), with Emacs as my IDE and gnumake for my build system. There are good Mingw ports for all the major revision control systems too, including Git.
That's the toolset I used to create the SETI#Home Service, which was a wrapper for the SETI#Home client that installed and ran it as a Windows service, did failure detection and auto restarts, and had a built in web server for monitoring. All that with no VisualStudio.
You can use Eclipse with C/C++ Development Toolkit and with Mingw Compilers. the only problem is that you will not have M$ Stuff like MFC, but you can use QT or wxWindows
Two solutions that immediately come to mind:
Cygwin
MinGW
Using makefiles does not prevent you from using the Microsoft C++ compiler, which is nice if you want to use the VS debugger.