MINGW or cygwin

[blaarghalltheusernamesare]

which would have a better GCC compiler on windows, Mingw or cygwin. Don't start screaming blasphemy at me. i have to use windows for school.

[jemimah]

Do they conflict? Probably try them both. I think MS Visual Studio is free these days too.

The great thing about cygwin is you can use PuTTY with it so you don't need the terrible windows terminal. PuTTYcyg is the only solution I know about for that problem. http://code.google.com/p/puttycyg/

[jemimah]

If it's XP you can also give it a more unixy feel with blackbox for windows.
http://bb4win.sourceforge.net/bblean/

[dejan555]

Mingw is cygwin fork I think.
Most of them are based on cygwin originally in fact.
I used cygwin, you can install all development tools and utilities on it including gcc, cc, make, cmake and similar. Haven't used Mingw though.
I also checked out MobaXterm which is interesting since it wraps bash shell with several utilities and X server in single executable. It's not that flexible if you want to add stuff to it though.
Speaking of alternative shells, I liked the utbox fork of bb4win which is more fluxbox-like.

[jamesbond]

cygwin gives you more posix stuff. You can compile most of the unix/linux stuff with it with minimal changes, as it supports posix/unix/linux API. But the downside is that you need to distribute your app with cygwin.dll (the posix emulation layer), otherwise it won't work.

mingw is just that - "minimalist gnu for windows". It basically contains gnu build tools (gcc and friends) to compile your stuff for native windows execution. Note - native windows execution. There is no posix emulation layer here. Your app will have to use Win32 API, and you still need to include <windows.h> most of the time. The upside - there is no extra dll to distribute.

Oh, and cygwin only works on Windows. Mingw can be either be native windows or cross-hosted (meaning, you can install mingw on windows to compile and build windows programs, or you can install mingw on linux box to compile and build windows programs).

As jemimah said, Visual Studio Express is also free these days, though yeah you do that and your program will forever be tied to Windows.

If you're stuck to Windows, I suggest that that your app with cross-platform framework, e.g. QT, GTK, wxwidgets, etc for GUI. Then you can choose either cygwin or mingw --- and build your app on top of this. Don't use Win32 API. When the time comes, you can ditch you windows, and recompile your app under any open platform.

[gcmartin]

For Linux OS operation on MS
From the discussions here MINGW/cygwin allow Linux terminal Windows on a Microsoft system. There also used to be a free Microsoft offering that allow Unix-Linux (POSIX) to do the same. It may still be available and if so, could run across XP and newer MS systems,.

For Development
Seem that if you want to build apps that run in both environments (Windows and Linux), doesn't Eclipse provide that ability to easily do this? It along with several others IDEs will build CLI based OR Screen -GUIs that followed the International Standard that most modern-day Distros use.

And, if I can extend (I may be wrong on this), I believe that your apps can be built with both MS APIs or with Linux X controls that are native to the target OS where it will run.

Puppy does not provide utilities to create International Standard (ISO) screened GUIs as of yet.

Hope this helps

[sc0ttman]

I've only been looking into C++ and C for literally about 1 hour now, but I read in a number of places that stuff compiled on cygwin runs slower than stuff compiled with mingw... (Correct me if I am wrong!)

I just got Dev-C++ and Dev-Pascal from bloodshed. Will play with them soon.... But am totally foreign to this stuff... I also (will) need to use M$ to build stuff...

Any advice on why NOT to use these apps for my C++ and Pascal programming (on my XP install) would be appreciated...
(I have loads to learn about cross-platform code, POSIX, Win32 APIs, etc....)

[gcmartin]

... (I have loads to learn about cross-platform code, POSIX, Win32 APIs, etc....)

You will thank me years from now...But, look for an IDE that will produce your applications in whatever environment (unix/linux/M$/HP-UX/AIX/mainframe) you target if for. That way, you build it once, tell it all of the environments you want it to run in, and you're done (so to speak).

Eclipse is free, robust, has a large following of users and has been around for over 14 years. There will always be someone that can help you if you get stuck.

Pick a language (C/Pascal/any-other) that you are comfortable with.

Hope it helps

[sc0ttman]

You will thank me years from now...

I'll thank you now.

[gcmartin]

AS I explained before, I am NOT an active developer. After making a recommendation earlier on use of an IDE, found 2 pieces of information that many would find useful.

Thre is another couple IDE that might prove useful to some. In addition to Eclipse, there is NetBeans. Both of these are GPL'd for public use.

But, the most interesting is a Free Commercial complete packaging from IBM. It may prove very useful as it come complete with tools and a active connection to its development community and a forum....for Free. From the several reviews I have seen, this looks like a very interesting offer.
Find it here.

Hope this helps

[jamesbond]

You may also consider Code::Blocks http://www.codeblocks.org/

[blaarghalltheusernamesare]

I've decided on cygwin for now. i just need to figure out how to get it to show up under toolchains in eclipse.