GCC compiler collections for windows.

GCC is GNU Compiler Collection. It supports most of the programming language like C, C++, Java, Ada etc. But GCC is basically used in UNIX-like systems, Linux. But what if you want such an environment for Windows? Is there any replacement? Is there any way? That too open source and free? Yes!! There is.

MinGW stands for Minimalized GNU for Windows. It provides a complete open source tool for windows environment.It is the collection of all the compilers of GCC for windows platform. It don't need any 3rd party DLLs. It does uses some of DLLs which are inbuilt in windows OS. 


MinGW includes

• A port of GNU Compiler Collection, including C, C++, Ada, Fortran compilers.
• Assembler, linker, archive manager
• A command line installer
• A GUI wrapper for the command line.

Download. 

You can download latest MinGW for windows  download here. Its a sourceforge.net download.

For beginners, here is a small tutorial to how to use MinGW. 

How to compile a C++ executable file in MinGW environment. 

First, make sure you have installed the environment on your system from the above download link.

Now assuming that your directory of MinGW is c:\MinGW, and bin folder is situated in that directory, lets compile the cpp file. 

Open a command prompt window under Administrator privilege and set the current directory where you have saved .cpp file. You can do it by typing cd c:\MinGW\bin if you have saved that file in bin folder. 

Now type the following command g++ helloworld.cpp -o helloworld.exe . the -o represents the name of the output file. If not mentioned it outputs a file with the name a.cpp

If there is no error in your file, the file will run as per the codes. 

You can find complete set of instructions of using the MinGW here. 

It have options for pdf, html, or text files in different languages. If not sure which one to download, mention the language and your Cpu architecture in comments section below. I will find it for you. 

The official website of the project is http://www.mingw.org/ . You can get all the related documentation and how-to-install things at the website along with the source code and latest development news in the MinGW world. 

mb.

Open Source Revolution.