Ha! Sorry I took so long to post back. I decided to give up on this venture... C++ programming tools cost wayyyyy too much... oh well, guess I'll never be able to do it.

All you people up there, in City Hall...

> Ha! Sorry I took so long to post back. I decided to give up on this venture...
> C++ programming tools cost wayyyyy too much... oh well, guess I'll never be able
> to do it.

What are you talking about? Everything you need is absolutely free. For C/C++ programming, look no further than GCC.


----
Bart

> > Ha! Sorry I took so long to post back. I decided to give up on this venture...
> > C++ programming tools cost wayyyyy too much... oh well, guess I'll never be
> able
> > to do it.
>
> What are you talking about? Everything you need is absolutely free. For C/C++
> programming, look no further than GCC.
>

Just out of interest, before Bart pointed out that the cost of C++ is 0 pounds and 0 pence, what exactly did you think they cost?

Which package were you going to buy? I'll bet it involves the word 'net'.

You learn something old everyday...

IIRC Microsoft have a free download for non commercial use of their C++ compiler since last year. I don't think it includes the environment though.

smf

> IIRC Microsoft have a free download for non commercial use of their C++ compiler
> since last year. I don't think it includes the environment though.

I think you're right, I remember hearing about this. IDEs are overrated anyway and I don't think it's a good idea for beginner programmers to use them, but Microsoft's compiler was definitely not intended to be used on the command line the way GCC was.



----
Bart

My last project involved building using two different MS compilers ( MSVC V6 & EVC V3 ) with custom makefiles. It also used DJGPP, HITECH C ( z80 cross compiler ) & for debugging on a PC the Visual Studio compiler ( but that did use the project ).

So I don't see why any compiler is more suited to be run from a command line :-)

smf

> IIRC Microsoft have a free download for non commercial use of their C++ compiler
> since last year. I don't think it includes the environment though.
>
> smf
>

That sounds good - I had a similar home-made thing back in Uni actually - I only had 12Megs of Uni disk space (before we discovered how to stop the C: drives formatting themselves after we logged out), so I just got Vis Studio 6.0 and trimmed out cl.exe, nmake, the resource compiler, and some stuff like user32.lib. I think it squeezed into about 3Meg, leaving me space for other things. And it worked a treat, it's how I made DGen 1.00, using that and DOS edit

Do you have a link anywhere for that free download of their new compiler versions?


You learn something old everyday...

> > IIRC Microsoft have a free download for non commercial use of their C++
> compiler
> > since last year. I don't think it includes the environment though.
>
> I think you're right, I remember hearing about this. IDEs are overrated anyway
> and I don't think it's a good idea for beginner programmers to use them, but
> Microsoft's compiler was definitely not intended to be used on the command line
> the way GCC was.

No I think it is - I think they build a lot of their stuff internally using makefiles instead of an IDE

>
>
>
> ----
> Bart
>


You learn something old everyday...

> Do you have a link anywhere for that free download of their new compiler
> versions?

a href something something:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=272BE09D-40BB-49FD-9CB0-4BFA122FA91B&displaylang=en

> Do you have a link anywhere for that free download of their new compiler
> versions?

Right here.

It includes just the compiler and linker, C/C++ runtime library, .NET runtime, and a few samples. It does not include nmake (you can still use GNU make), any form of IDE, Platform SDK (but you can download that freely anyway), or much of anything else really.

- Barry Rodewald
http://galemu.emuunlim.com/

> So I don't see why any compiler is more suited to be run from a command line :-)

Its command line syntax is a bitch, IMHO. ;) I use MSVC6's cl.exe with GNU make and MS-DOS Editor to build and write Supermodel. If only it considered / to be equivalent to \ in a file name, the Makefile would be a lot nicer.





----
Bart

does gnu make support replace operations?

we use this to create response files with nmake.exe

$(LINK) @<<
$(**: = +
)
$*;
<<

Each file is put on a seperate line.

the other alternative is to hack up a cl front end which converts the parameters for you :-)

smf

> does gnu make support replace operations?

It probably does. I just haven't bothered to look too deeply. My solution is to have 2 lists of object files, one using forward slashes the other with back slashes.


----
Bart

> does gnu make support replace operations?

my_files: foo/bar.cc, bar/foo.cc
my_files_object: $(my_files:.cc=.o) # specific for extensions
my_files_msvc: $(subst /,\,$(my_files))


Farfetch'd

> > does gnu make support replace operations?
>
> my_files: foo/bar.cc, bar/foo.cc
> my_files_object: $(my_files:.cc=.o) # specific for extensions
> my_files_msvc: $(subst /,\,$(my_files))

Ah, thanks. I had something like my_files_msvc except I wrote out all the object files manually.


----
Bart

> Ah, thanks.

Sure. I suggest you to go through http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_mono/make.html. It takes you just a few minutes, but could help you in the future :)

Farfetch'd