On Thu, 16 Sep 2004, Buck-C wrote: > A friend of mine that has a fair amount of C programming experience and I, > who has no experience in programming in C, are looking for a common compiler > on which he can program and I can learn to program in C (and all variations, > C++ etc.) I am familiar with the Microsoft Visual methods of programming in > various languages and applications. Primarily I would like to learn and use > the C compiler/GUI on Windows, but I would like to think that what I learn > can carry over to the Linux box as well, should I decide to program in > Linux. From what I understand, GCC and its various libraries are available > for Windows. Neither of us has ever worked with GCC and know nothing about > it. Below are several questions. Thank you all in advance for your > patience and answers. > > From where do I download GCC for Windows in a usable format? You could try mingw : http://www.mingw.org There are two packages there : mingw which provides headers and libraries and the gnu compilers, to compile native windows programs and libraries, and msys, which provides all the autotools, commonly used on linux. > I followed the GCC website but got lost somewhere. I think I found it > somewhere in .HZ format but I have no way to unzip it. > > Does GCC or any other freely licensed version have a GUI interface such as > MS Visual C? > There exist some IDE : dev-c++ (http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html) or Visual-mingw (http://visual-mingw.sourceforge.net/) or Mingw Developper Studio (http://www.parinya.ca/, see products) > Is GCC a good compiler on which to learn C? > i think so. It is more close to the norm than microsoft products > What all do I need to download and install to have a complete and usable > compiler? > see mingw.org web site, and its mailing lists for further information. hope this help regards Vincent TORRI
