I have been asked to write a (very) simple program for a set of Windows machines (XP I think) – so simple that the choice of language isn’t really an issue. However, I want to be able to distribute a binary/script that will run straight away on the Windows machine, without the need to pre-install any interpretor or virtual machine. I’m developing on a Linux machine and I have no idea what languages Windows supports ‘out of the box’. Can anyone advise?
For example
- Perl would be great but I don’t believe windows machines come with Perl pre-installed? Asking the user to install Perl to use my script is not acceptable.
- I believe Python has the same problem? (although maybe I can use the PyInstaller? — as in this question)
- Likewise Java? Is the virtual machine pre-installed on most Windows distributions? (I understand it got removed after a dispute with Sun Microsystems?)
The only option I can think of so far is
- c/c++ with MinGW cross-compiler.
While I’m happy to write the code in c++, I wanted to check my language options first.
The only scripting languages supported out of the box are the batch interpreter, vbscript and jscript. Other than that you are into compiled languages. A good option could be C# but make sure you target the .net version that shipped with XP.