I’m taking an Introduction to C++ this semester, so I need to set up development environments in both my Windows and Ubuntu partitions (I switch between them). I was planning to use GCC in both environments for consistency and because I plan to do my serious C++ developing in Linux with GCC.
It appears that installing MSYS and MinGW is the best way to use GCC and replicate my Linux dev environment. However, just setting up MSYS and MinGW in Windows appears to be a long and arduous process, and I’m imagining that I will have limitations or compatibility problems in the future.
- Do the benefits of setting up a MSYS Linux-like development environment on Windows outweigh the costs?
- Will I be able to use all the libraries that I could if I were using Visual C++?
I think you’re going about this the wrong way – I would actually suggest you use Visual Studio on the Windows environment, rather than going out of your way to setup GCC. It’s a benefit, not a drawback, to run your code on multiple compilers from multiple vendors.
Both GCC and Visual Studio are highly conformant (at least recent versions). You won’t have any trouble with standard libraries and going between them, and if you do have trouble, it’s probably an issue in your code.