Question

How do I set my Visual studio 2008 compiler to GNU GCC. Can I also make it specific to projects? I didn’t find any conclusive answer.

Thank you.

Answer 1

You can’t use the compiler directly.

You can, however, invoke a makefile instead of using the built-in build system.

Example of configuration:

1. Install MinGW (I guess this step is already done), including mingw32-make
2. Create a makefile for mingw32-make called MinGWMakefile , with 3 targets: clean, build, and rebuild. This can be very tedious if you’ve never done that before.
3. Create a new configuration for your project
4. Go to configuration properties->general->configuration type, and select “makefile”
5. Go to configuration properties->NMake, and use these command lines:

   Build Command Line: mingw32-make -f MinGWMakefile build
   ReBuild Command Line: mingw32-make -f MinGWMakefile rebuild
   Clean Command Line: mingw32-make -f MinGWMakefile clean

Enable “go to line” functionality on compiler messages:

You need to transform the output of gcc, from this:

filename:line:message

To this:

filename(line):message

I was using a custom C++ program to do that, but any regular expression tool will do the trick.