Question

I intent to write simple programs in c/c++ that would be run in console. I will be writing code in Notepad++ so I do not need an IDE. What I need is a compiler that will produce a standalone EXE file that would run on any 2000/XP/Vista/7 system without need for installing VC9/cygwin/MinGW/.Net or other additional libraries.

As far as I understand GCC runs on windows through cygwin, so any app produced by it also needs cygwin1.dll in its presence to run, right ?

Answer 1

Your main options are MSVC and mingw.

• If you want to write C code then avoid MSVC which doesn’t have a real C compiler, just a fake wrapper around its C++ compiler. Oh, and the supported dialect is close to C89.
• If you want to write C++ then MSVC is fine and modern versions have become quite good and reasonably compliant with the standards.
• If you want to write both C and C++ as per your question then mingw is probably best.

Note that mingw is a native Windows port of the GNU compilers and does not require cygwin. The 32 bit version of mingw is simple to install. If you need to produce 64 bit executables then it’s a bit more work to get the 64 bit version of mingw installed. Similarly, if you want the free MS compiler in 64 bit mode you have to do some dirty work to get it installed.

With all of these options you can statically link the runtime to avoid having to deploy a runtime to target machines.