Re: windows programming with g++

[Ulrich Eckhardt]

cppaddict wrote:
> I come from a UNIX background, and have written lots of console apps
> using g++.  I'm comfortable with using a text editor, makefiles, and a
> command line compiler.  Is there any way to write windows programs
> this way?

mingw32 is a program-suite containing the GCC, make, a shell and some more
stuff for creating native win32 executables. I'd take a look at that.
There's also devc++ which is an IDE.

> I just tried compiling a sample windows programming using g++, but I
> got an error saying it could not find the header file "afxwin.h",
> which I assume is a windows-specific library file that obvioulsy
> wouldn't come with g++.  

Nope, it's a header of a library, namely the MFC(MS Foundation Classes)
IIRC. It's shipped with Visual C++ and widely used in the win32 world.

> Perhaps there's a way to get all the necessary windows library files and
> put them where g++ can find them? Or am I walking down the wrong path?

MFC are a thin&ugly wrapper around the native win32 C-API which you don't
want to use (I do use it but I don't like it at all). Furthermore they are
not free or 'part of the system', even though they are widely used. Even
then, you could not use them due to compiler incompatibilities but would
need the sources...

> Any thoughts or advice would be much appreciated.

wxWidgets (formerly known as wxWindows), GTK, paragui, are alternative
windowing libs (and all are cross platform!) that come to mind.

Uli