C++ Environment Setup

Before you start doing programming using C++, you need following two software's available on your computer.

Text Editor:

This will be used to type your program. Examples of few editors include Windows Notepad, OS Edit command, Brief, Epsilon, EMACS, and vim or vi

Name and version of text editor can vary on different operating systems. For exampe Notepad will be used on Windows and vim or vi can be used on windows as well as Linux, or Unix.

The files you create with your editor are called source files, and for C++ they typically are named with the extension .cpp, .cp, or .c.

Before starting your programming, make sure you have one text editor in place and you have enough experience to type your C++ program.

C++ Compiler:

This is actual C++ compiler which will be used to compile your source code into final executable program.

Most C++ compilers don't care what extension you give your source code, but if you don't specify otherwise, many will use .cpp by default

Most frequently used and free available compiler is GNU C/C++ compiler, otherwise you can have compilers either from HP or Solaris if you have respective Operating Systems.

Installing GNU C/C++ Compiler:

Unix/Linux Installation:

If you are using Linux or Unix then check whether GCC is installed on your system by entering the following command from the command line:

$ g++ -v

If you have installed GCC then it should print a message such as the following:

Using built-in specs.
Target: i386-redhat-linuxConfigured with: ../configure --prefix=/usr .......
Thread model: posix
gcc version 4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-46)

If GCC is not installed, then you will have to install it yourself using the detailed instructions available athttp://gcc.gnu.org/install/

Mac OS X Installation:

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/technologies/tools/.

Windows Installation:

To install GCC at Windows you need to install MinGW. 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-<version>.exe.

While installing MinWG, at a minimum, you must install gcc-core, gcc-g++, binutils, and the MinGW runtime, but you may wish to install more.

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.

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.