Compiler choices
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The SDK is set up to be compiled with Visual Studio 2005, Visual C++ Express, or gcc (see Talk Page).
Students of MSDN Academic Alliance Member Schools may qualify for free or discounted Visual Studio media.
Academic shops such as Academic Superstore also sell Visual Studio and other software at heavily discounted prices for students.
Using other compilers
- Q: The thought occurs that if the SDK can be tweaked to compile on an older version of VS, maybe it could also be tweaked to compile using Dev-C++ or another free compiler. Has anyone ever tried this? How can I do it? Or is it impossible?
- A: Dev-C++ is an IDE. The default compiler it uses is called MinGW, which is a Windows port of GCC (the more-or-less standard Linux compiler). Attempts to compile the SDK using MinGW have failed. Getting it to succeed would require a non-trivial amount of work.
Another solution is to use a port of the SDK to CMake. CMake is a cross-platform makefile and project file generator, and will generate Visual Studio project files for 6.0 2002 and 2003, and also NMake makefiles for the Visual C++ Toolkit. It can also generate GNUmake files for compiling under GCC. It may also assist any porting to MinGW.