Obtaining and Installing GCC
Problem
You wish to obtain GCC, the free GNU C/C++ compiler.
Solution
The solution depends on your operating system.
Windows
Install MinGW, Cygwin, or both.
To install MinGW, go to the MinGW homepage, www.mingw.org, and follow the link to the MinGW download page. Download the latest version of the MinGW installation program, which should be named MinGW-.exe.
Next, run the installation program. It will ask you to specify where you want to install MinGW. It may also ask you which packages you wish to install; at a minimum, you must install gcc-core, gcc-g++, binutils, and the MinGW runtime, but you may wish to install more. When the installation is complete, you will be able to run gcc, g++, ar, ranlib, dlltool, and several other GNU tools from the Windows command line. You may wish to add the bin subdirectory of your MinGW installation to your PATH environment variable so that you can specify these tools on the command line by their simple names rather than by their full pathnames.
To install Cygwin, go to the Cygwin homepage, www.cygwin.com, and follow the link InstallCygwin Now to download the Cygwin installation program. Next, run the installation program. It will ask you to make a series of choices, such as where Cygwin should be installed.
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The most important choice you must make is the selection of packages. If you have enough disk space and a high-speed Internet connection, I recommend that you install all of the packages. To do this, click once on the word Default next to the word All at the top of the hierarchical display of packages. After a possibly long pause, the word Default should change to Install.
If you are short on disk space, or if you have a slow Internet connection, you can choose a smaller selection of packages. To select just the development tools, click once on the word Default next to the word Devel. After a possibly long pause, the word Default should change to Install. For an even smaller collection of packages, expand the list of development packages by clicking on the + icon next to the word Devel. Select the packages gcc-core, gcc-g++, and make by clicking on the word Skip, opposite each package, causing Skip to change to Install.
When you are done selecting packages, press Finish. When the installation program completes, the Cygwin installation directory should contain a file named cygwin.bat . Running this script will display the Cygwin shell, a command-line environment from which you can run gcc, g++, ar, ranlib, dlltool, make, and any other utilities you chose to install. The installation process adds the bin subdirectory of the Cygwin installation to your PATH environment variable, so you can also run these utilities from the Windows shell cmd.exe. You will find, however, that the Cygwin shella port of the bash shellis a much friendlier environment for running GNU utilities.
Unix
Check whether GCC is installed on your system by entering g++ -v from the command line. If GCC is installed, and if C++ language support is available, it should print a message such as the following:
Using built-in specs. Target: powerpc-apple-darwin8 Configured with: /private/var/tmp/gcc/gcc-5026.obj~19/src/configure --disable-checking --prefix=/usr ...
If GCC is not installed, or if it is installed without support for C++, you will have to install it yourself. In general this is a complex process that depends on your platform; among other things, you may have to install GNU make and the GNU binutils package. Detailed instructions are available at gcc.gnu.org/install.
If you use Mac OS X, the easiest way to obtain GCC is to download the Xcode development environment from Apple's web site and follow the simple installation instructions. Xcode is currently available at developer.apple.com/tools.
If you use Linux, some version of GCC should already be installed; type g++ -v to determine the version. The current version of GCC is 4.0.0; if your version is not relatively recent, use the package management system accompanying your Linux distribution to install the most recent version.
Discussion
Cygwin and MinGW represent very different approaches to porting the GNU tools to Windows. Cygwin is an ambitious project to produce a Unix-like environment hosted by Windows. It provides a Unix-compatibility layer which allows programs written for Unix to be compiled and run on Windows. Consequently, an enormous assortment of Unix utilities are available for Cygwin. Even if you are not a Unix developer, you may soon come to regard the Cygwin tools as indispensable.
MinGW, which stands for "Minimalist GNU for Windows," provides a minimal environment for building Windows executables using GCC. Among other things, MinGW includes a port of GCC, a port of the GNU archiver and linker, and a port of the GNU debugger GDB. It also includes MSYS, a command-line environment capable of executing GNU makefiles and configure scripts. MSYS will be discussed in Recipe 1.14.
One important difference between Cygwin and MinGW relates to licensing. With a few exceptions, you can distribute binaries compiled with the MinGW port of GCC under any license you wish. Binaries built with the Cygwin port of GCC, on the other hand, are covered by the GNU General Public License (GPL) by default. If you want to distribute a program compiled under Cygwin without making the source available, you must purchase a license from Red Hat. For complete details, see the Cygwin and MinGW websites.
See Also
Recipe 1.14
Building C++ Applications
- Introduction to Building
- Obtaining and Installing GCC
- Building a Simple Hello, World Application from the Command Line
- Building a Static Library from the Command Line
- Building a Dynamic Library from the Command Line
- Building a Complex Application from the Command Line
- Installing Boost.Build
- Building a Simple Hello, World Application Using Boost.Build
- Building a Static Library Using Boost.Build
- Building a Dynamic Library Using Boost.Build
- Building a Complex application Using Boost.Build
- Building a Static Library with an IDE
- Building a Dynamic Library with an IDE
- Building a Complex Application with an IDE
- Obtaining GNU make
- Building A Simple Hello, World Application with GNU make
- Building a Static Library with GNU Make
- Building a Dynamic Library with GNU Make
- Building a Complex Application with GNU make
- Defining a Macro
- Specifying a Command-Line Option from Your IDE
- Producing a Debug Build
- Producing a Release Build
- Specifying a Runtime Library Variant
- Enforcing Strict Conformance to the C++ Standard
- Causing a Source File to Be Linked Automatically Against a Specified Library
- Using Exported Templates
Code Organization
- Introduction
- Making Sure a Header File Gets Included Only Once
- Ensuring You Have Only One Instance of a Variable Across Multiple Source Files
- Reducing #includes with Forward Class Declarations
- Preventing Name Collisions with Namespaces
- Including an Inline File
Numbers
- Numbers
- Introduction
- Converting a String to a Numeric Type
- Converting Numbers to Strings
- Testing Whether a String Contains a Valid Number
- Comparing Floating-Point Numbers with Bounded Accuracy
- Parsing a String Containing a Number in Scientific Notation
- Converting Between Numeric Types
- Getting the Minimum and Maximum Values for a Numeric Type
Strings and Text
- Strings and Text
- Introduction
- Padding a String
- Trimming a String
- Storing Strings in a Sequence
- Getting the Length of a String
- Reversing a String
- Splitting a String
- Tokenizing a String
- Joining a Sequence of Strings
- Finding Things in Strings
- Finding the nth Instance of a Substring
- Removing a Substring from a String
- Converting a String to Lower- or Uppercase
- Doing a Case-Insensitive String Comparison
- Doing a Case-Insensitive String Search
- Converting Between Tabs and Spaces in a Text File
- Wrapping Lines in a Text File
- Counting the Number of Characters, Words, and Lines in a Text File
- Counting Instances of Each Word in a Text File
- Add Margins to a Text File
- Justify a Text File
- Squeeze Whitespace to Single Spaces in a Text File
- Autocorrect Text as a Buffer Changes
- Reading a Comma-Separated Text File
- Using Regular Expressions to Split a String
Dates and Times
- Dates and Times
- Introduction
- Obtaining the Current Date and Time
- Formatting a Date/Time as a String
- Performing Date and Time Arithmetic
- Converting Between Time Zones
- Determining a Days Number Within a Given Year
- Defining Constrained Value Types
Managing Data with Containers
- Managing Data with Containers
- Introduction
- Using vectors Instead of Arrays
- Using vectors Efficiently
- Copying a vector
- Storing Pointers in a vector
- Storing Objects in a list
- Mapping strings to Other Things
- Using Hashed Containers
- Storing Objects in Sorted Order
- Storing Containers in Containers
Algorithms
- Algorithms
- Introduction
- Iterating Through a Container
- Removing Objects from a Container
- Randomly Shuffling Data
- Comparing Ranges
- Merging Data
- Sorting a Range
- Partitioning a Range
- Performing Set Operations on Sequences
- Transforming Elements in a Sequence
- Writing Your Own Algorithm
- Printing a Range to a Stream
Classes
- Classes
- Introduction
- Initializing Class Member Variables
- Using a Function to Create Objects (a.k.a. Factory Pattern)
- Using Constructors and Destructors to Manage Resources (or RAII)
- Automatically Adding New Class Instances to a Container
- Ensuring a Single Copy of a Member Variable
- Determining an Objects Type at Runtime
- Determining if One Objects Class Is a Subclass of Another
- Giving Each Instance of a Class a Unique Identifier
- Creating a Singleton Class
- Creating an Interface with an Abstract Base Class
- Writing a Class Template
- Writing a Member Function Template
- Overloading the Increment and Decrement Operators
- Overloading Arithmetic and Assignment Operators for Intuitive Class Behavior
- Calling a Superclass Virtual Function
Exceptions and Safety
- Exceptions and Safety
- Introduction
- Creating an Exception Class
- Making a Constructor Exception-Safe
- Making an Initializer List Exception-Safe
- Making Member Functions Exception-Safe
- Safely Copying an Object
Streams and Files
- Streams and Files
- Introduction
- Lining Up Text Output
- Formatting Floating-Point Output
- Writing Your Own Stream Manipulators
- Making a Class Writable to a Stream
- Making a Class Readable from a Stream
- Getting Information About a File
- Copying a File
- Deleting or Renaming a File
- Creating a Temporary Filename and File
- Creating a Directory
- Removing a Directory
- Reading the Contents of a Directory
- Extracting a File Extension from a String
- Extracting a Filename from a Full Path
- Extracting a Path from a Full Path and Filename
- Replacing a File Extension
- Combining Two Paths into a Single Path
Science and Mathematics
- Science and Mathematics
- Introduction
- Computing the Number of Elements in a Container
- Finding the Greatest or Least Value in a Container
- Computing the Sum and Mean of Elements in a Container
- Filtering Values Outside a Given Range
- Computing Variance, Standard Deviation, and Other Statistical Functions
- Generating Random Numbers
- Initializing a Container with Random Numbers
- Representing a Dynamically Sized Numerical Vector
- Representing a Fixed-Size Numerical Vector
- Computing a Dot Product
- Computing the Norm of a Vector
- Computing the Distance Between Two Vectors
- Implementing a Stride Iterator
- Implementing a Dynamically Sized Matrix
- Implementing a Constant-Sized Matrix
- Multiplying Matricies
- Computing the Fast Fourier Transform
- Working with Polar Coordinates
- Performing Arithmetic on Bitsets
- Representing Large Fixed-Width Integers
- Implementing Fixed-Point Numbers
Multithreading
- Multithreading
- Introduction
- Creating a Thread
- Making a Resource Thread-Safe
- Notifying One Thread from Another
- Initializing Shared Resources Once
- Passing an Argument to a Thread Function
Internationalization
- Internationalization
- Introduction
- Hardcoding a Unicode String
- Writing and Reading Numbers
- Writing and Reading Dates and Times
- Writing and Reading Currency
- Sorting Localized Strings
XML
- XML
- Introduction
- Parsing a Simple XML Document
- Working with Xerces Strings
- Parsing a Complex XML Document
- Manipulating an XML Document
- Validating an XML Document with a DTD
- Validating an XML Document with a Schema
- Transforming an XML Document with XSLT
- Evaluating an XPath Expression
- Using XML to Save and Restore a Collection of Objects
Miscellaneous
- Miscellaneous
- Introduction
- Using Function Pointers for Callbacks
- Using Pointers to Class Members
- Ensuring That a Function Doesnt Modify an Argument
- Ensuring That a Member Function Doesnt Modify Its Object
- Writing an Operator That Isnt a Member Function
- Initializing a Sequence with Comma-Separated Values
Index
EAN: 2147483647
Pages: 241
