Thread: gnu g++

GNU is a whole buttload of programs that were created by a number of free thinking programmers in the MIT artificial intelligence lab decades ago. Without them, personal computers would not be. g++, the c++ compiler, is one of them. But a compiler is only a small part of the development process. DJGPP (DJ is his name, gpp is the dos-accepted name of g++) is a distro of the GNU tools for the windows platform.

So DJGPP uses the g++ compiler, and also the loader, parser-generator, and all those other behind-the-scenes tools that make a program a program.

However, DJGPP is not the only implementation of GNU tools. Originally GNU was to have it's own kernel (the GNU herd) but they tried to make an asynchronous system and Linus Torvalds beat them to the punch, creating the unified Linux kernel, which integrated well with the GNU tools, and became the accepted Free Source platform. It is really an extremely interesting story, I only wish I had been born thirty years earliar and been able to be a part of it. But then again, that would mean that I would have to wait until I was an old man to play D2 again.

Thanks very much, I'm almost done with Intro to C++ at school and I've been using "Turbo c++" which is very old .Someone recommended g++ to be a little more up to date. So which g++ would you suggest a novice like me should use, the DJ or should I get it directly from the GNU mirror sites?

Thanks again.

I would recommend using mingw or cygwin, which are both excellent ports of gcc, gdb, ld, and others. In fact, cygwin has almost all gnu tools. Both are cmdline, but they can be tied to the bloodshed dev visual frontend.