Thread: How do you create exes from your c++ program?

Originally Posted by Anubis208

im using windows, how would you link and compile?

"cl" is the Microsoft Visual Studio compiler. Given a single (but complete) source file, it will compile and link the source for you in one step. Of course, if the complete project is not in one file, you either have to give multiple source files to the compile command, or, if you have MANY files to compile, you'd have to compile one or a few files at a time, and link later.

You should really know how to do that if you are capable of writing an application that generates C++ code. How do you compile that?

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Mats

Ok, so

Code:

system("g++ -o myprog.exe myprog.cpp");

You do realize that packaging gcc-mingw WITH your package is probably not a great idea. It's likely better that you put a link to where a suitable gcc-mingw can be found on your download page.

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Mats

Originally Posted by medievalelks

Are there licensing issues or are you thinking it will be too large? Or both? :-)

Personally, I don't like software that asks me to download other software. At the very least, I'd provide an installer that downloads it for them, but I'd prefer to bundle everything they need.

Licensing is one thing, size is another. There are plenty of places you can get gcc-mingw, and many may already have a copy installed already - no point in downloading a few extra megs for that. [Or have two packages, one with or one without to solve that particular problem].

The licensing gets more interesting. If you provide gcc-mingw binaries, you also have to provide the source-code.

The best option, of course, is to just provide a package that allows the user to use whatever compiler he/she likes [within some reason, of course] - then just tell the user that they will need one of these <some list of compiler> - candidates for that list are recent Visual Studio releases and gcc-mingw.

There should be little reason (other than "how do I compile" that changes between compilers as long as the generated code is reasonably standards compliant, so why force the user onto a particular compiler.

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Mats

Originally Posted by medievalelks

It depends on the target market. The users may not be programmers at all. They're just pushing buttons, dragging and dropping, and kicking screensavers (or whatever) out the back.

It also depends on what the developer tested with. Generated code that compiles with MinGW may not with VC++, or vice versa.

Sure, target market will decide what is the best option.

Yes, of course, the developer will need to test with both, because code that compiles with one may not compile with the other, and even if both happily compiles it, doesn't mean that it runs perfectly from both.

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Mats