Thread: Compiling Simple Programs- Use What Compiler?

Visual studio works with projects - that's how it is.

You can use command-line compilation if you want, but that means no "click on error to jump to the location in the code".

Or, for simple projects, what I often do, is to have a project "scratch" that I replace the contents of "scratch.cpp" file with whatever code I want to try out. You can always use "save as" or "copy"[on the command line] to save away an existing excercise for looking at later. So you alway compile the same "scratch.cpp" each time, but with completely different content.

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Mats

1. Do you think it would be better to use a different program to build the programs from the book?

Not necessarily. The compiler provided with the MS Visual C++ 2005 Express is reasonably standards conformant.

2. If so, which is the best free one to use? I used to used Bloodshed but it stopped working.

Bloodshed's Dev-C++ is an IDE that uses the MinGW port of GCC for its compiler toolchain. If you are concerned with the halt in Dev-C++ development, you can continue to use the MinGW port of GCC (e.g., the g++ compiler for C++) at the command line, via the MSYS shell (also provided by the MinGW team), or with some other free IDE, e.g., Code Blocks or even Eclipse and Netbeans.

but it seems like every time you want to type in a simple program you have to screw around starting an entire project etc.

3. If not, how can I configure Visual C++ Express so that it's less hassle to build the programs through it? I don't want to keep messing around starting new projects each time.

You can setup a project and use it over and over again to compile and run the examples.