Windows development environment

[Antoine]

Hi chaps

Can anyone recommend a good free environment for compiling Angband on a Windows 7 box?

I am used to MSVC++ (used it for *bands on my old computer, but did not keep it when I built the new machine) - do I remember correctly that there is a free version? Alternatively do mingw based approaches work well?

A.

[Timo Pietilä]

Hi chaps

Can anyone recommend a good free environment for compiling Angband on a Windows 7 box?

I am used to MSVC++ (used it for *bands on my old computer, but did not keep it when I built the new machine) - do I remember correctly that there is a free version? Alternatively do mingw based approaches work well?

A.

I don't know about Win7 but I use cygwin to compile in XP. It's not actually a "development environment", just compiler, but it is sufficient for minor tweaks.

[Nick]

I use msys/mingw on Win 7 and it works great for compiling from the command line.

I don't use an IDE as such, so can't comment on those.

[nppangband]

I use cygwin to compile, and eclipse as the development environment.

Both are pretty well documented, and relatively easy to set up.

[Pete Mack]

Yes there's a free version of Visual Studio (aka MSVC), though you need rather lot of memory to run it. Several people have reported luck using it for Angband development. Strangely, no one has checked in a project file :/

[RogerN]

Yes there's a free version of Visual Studio (aka MSVC), though you need rather lot of memory to run it. Several people have reported luck using it for Angband development. Strangely, no one has checked in a project file :/

When I use Visual Studio to compile Angband I always end up having to rename player/util.c because the linker gets confused otherwise. If I knew how to get it to play nicely with multiple files named util.c then I would happily submit a project file.

IIRC, these are the steps needed to get Angband to compile in Visual Studio:
* Change character set from Unicode to Multi-Byte
* Change struct alignment from the default setting (dword aligned?) to single-byte alignment
* Add angband/src to the #include folders in order for files in subfolders (such as player/player.c) to find the root folder's header files.
* Add winmm.lib to the additional libraries
* Rename player/util.c to player/playerutil.c so the linker doesn't get confused by two source files named util.c.

[camlost]

I use codeblocks (which ships with a mingw/gcc compiler). It works. I've also used bloodshed, but it's dev ceased a while ago, IIRC.

[ekolis]

I would have committed a project file, but I don't have commit access, and my variant (Jackband) kinda died off after Sangband came back

[Antoine]

Shameless bump

[ekolis]

What are you bumping for, Antoine? It's only 2 days!

But anyway, if you want me to put together a VC++ project file for the latest Angband version, sure, I can do that... it might get out of sync though if none of the regular devs use VC++...

And how are you doing, anyway? I really enjoyed Ironband; any plans on continuing development?

[camlost]

More importantly, why are you bumping? Several people have mentioned good, free windows C IDEs.

Are you looking for more suggestions? comparisons? particular feature(s)?
Are you looking for additional instructions for one of these?
Have you tested any to see if they'll suit your needs?

For the most part, once an IDE is working, they all work pretty similarly, and have similar feature sets, at least in my experience.

[APWhite]

Here is a Q&D on how to get MS Visual Studio2008 to run angband and the borg. I hope I didn't miss anysteps.

Andrew

Creating a VS2008 Project using the borg and the official release.
1. Download the game source code
2. Download the borg source then unzip it into the \src directory.
3. Create a new project using VS2008
4. Exclude from the project the directories gtk, nds, osx. And the "main-???" files except main-win.c
5. Project -> Angband Properties -> Configuration Properties -> C/C++ -> Code Generation -> Run Time Library -> /MT
6. Project -> Angband Properties -> Configuration Properties -> Linker -> Input -> Additional Dependencies -> winmm.lib
7. Project -> Angband Properties -> Configuration Properties -> General -> Common Language Runtime Support -> No CLR
8. Edit config.h line 100. Remove the comments to #define ALLOW_BORG
9. Rename player\util.c to player\p-util.c
10. Remove the "main" entry point from Project -> Angband Properties -> Configuration Properties -> Linker -> Advanced -> Entry Point

[Antoine]

What are you bumping for, Antoine? It's only 2 days!

But anyway, if you want me to put together a VC++ project file for the latest Angband version, sure, I can do that... it might get out of sync though if none of the regular devs use VC++...

And how are you doing, anyway? I really enjoyed Ironband; any plans on continuing development?

Hello

Nice of you to ask yes I'm doing well and I thought I might do a bit of light Iron/Quick development.

I think my next step will be to download a Microsoft Visual Studio Express Edition (but which? 2008 or 2010) and try to build a recent version of NPP. I'd be grateful to hear from anyone who has successfully done that. (I see APWhite has just posted instructions for building Vanilla on VS 2008, so I should read that for a start.)

If I can't get that working I'll try one of the other suggestions made further up the thread.

Thanks & cheers
A.

[ekolis]

If you don't want to mess with renaming files (say, if you're trying to sync with whatever version control system Angband uses these days), you can also set an option in the properties for player/util.c to produce a different .obj file, say, p-util.obj, without renaming player/util.c to player/p-util.c. Can't remember the exact name of the option but it's something like "output file override" or somesuch

There really ought to be some sort of global option though, which would set that sort of thing automatically... or even just put the obj files in the proper folder to begin with :P