free Win compiler, was: Re: [PD] Newbie with some questions

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Thursday, Oct 23, 2003, at 06:09 America/New_York, Olaf Matthes  
wrote:

>
>
> Frank Barknecht schrieb:
>>
>> Hallo,
>> Hans-Christoph Steiner hat gesagt: // Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
>>
>>> I have started trying to port parts of Pd to MinGW.  It would be  
>>> great
>>> if ultimately all of Pd would compile in MinGW so that Windows devs
>>> would have to buy (or ahem, "buy") a compiler.
>>
>> "would not"?
>>
correct.

>> That would be great, as I do have acces to windows machines, of
>> course, but I cannot and don't want to install expensive or software
>> that I, ahem, "buyed" there, to compile my externals for other users.
>
> You could try Microsoft .NET Framework SDK which is free (!) and can be
> downloaded somewhere on the Microsoft web site....
> I haven't tried it since I have VC++ but it is said to include
> everything one needs to compile ones own software. Not shure whether
> this is a joke!?
>
> See here:
>
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/downloads/list/ 
> netdevframework.asp
>
> http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=9B3A2CA6- 
> 3647-4070-9F41-A333C6B9181D&displaylang=en
>
> On http://www.thefreecountry.com/compilers/cpp.shtml is says:
>
> "Unbelievably, the Microsoft Visual C/C++ command line compiler, along
> with C#, VB.NET and JScript.NET, appears to be available from Microsoft
> for download for free. (Note that if you use the Opera web browser to  
> go
> to this URL, set Opera to pretend that it is Mozilla (just hit F12 and
> select Mozilla 5.0), otherwise Microsoft's web server will redirect you
> to a dummy page. Their browser detection script, which serves different
> pages to different browsers, is broken.) You will also need to download
> the Microsoft Platform SDK which contains the Windows headers and
> libraries for the compilers. The command line compiler is the same one
> that comes with the commercial Visual C++ Standard, which means that it
> does not have an optimizer (or at least, not the optimizer that ships
> with the Professional version that comes with MSDN)."

Hmm, so a free version of MS's compiler sounds alright, but a  
non-optimizing compiler does not.  The Cygwin route would be cool  
because a Linux machine could build binaries by cross compiling, so the  
building of the Windows installer could happen automatically on the  
same machine that built the RPMs, DEBs, etc.  MinGW makes the  
experience more Windows-like, which is probably the best options.

.hc

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"[W]e have invented the technology to eliminate scarcity, but we are  
deliberately throwing it away
to benefit those who profit from scarcity."
							-John Gilmore