MinGW is the perfect command line based windows development enviroment, avoiding Microsofts Visual Studio.
Getting MinGW
goto http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/ and choose to download
MinGW-5.0.2.exe (or equivilent latest version).
(its tiny, 134k) run it and choose "download and install" with the install type set as "current"
select
[x]mingw base tools
[x]g++
[x]objective C compiler
[x]mingwmake
it will then download and setup the required files.
Setting up the development environment
Add the folder to the PATH environment variables via start/control pannel/system/advanced/
click "environment variables"
edit the path by appending ;C:\mingw\bin\ (or what ever path you installed to)
Once you have OK'd all the open dialogs you can run the command line via.
start/run/ cmd
to test the install type gcc
you should get an error about input files, if you get a "command not found" then check the step above before continuing.
now open notepad and enter the following very quick test code.
#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
printf ("mingw made this !!\n");
return (0);
}
save it as test.c in a convenient location.
cd to the folder you saved test.c to and run gcc -o test test.c
if there are no errors run test
tada !
now we are ready to explore using openGL with MinGW
goto http://mywebpage.netscape.com/PtrPck/
and read more about MinGW then scroll down to the section titled NeHe
which is about a great openGL resource at http://nehe.gamedev.net/
and download the examples, lesson 4 is good one to try.
extract the zip file into its own folder, cd to that folder and type del lesson4.exe
mingw32-make
that builds the lesson4.exe using the makefile
you can also use the command gcc -Wall -s -O2 -mwindows -o lesson1.exe lesson1.cpp -lopengl32 -lglu32
to run the newly built code type
lesson4
Disclaimer:
This page is by me for me, if you are not me then please be aware of the following
I am not responsible for anything that works or does not work including files and pages made available at www.jumpstation.co.uk
I am also not responsible for any information(or what you or others do with it) available at www.jumpstation.co.uk
In fact I'm not responsible for anything ever, so there!