What is the difference between mingw32 make and make

If you do anything in a Windows application that tries to repaint the screen during a paint call, you can get stuck in an infinite loop.

Some programmers find using assert statements a good method to help debug. If you can get the address of a program crash and you have a map file for your program, you can locate the line or routine where the program crashed. Watson available which will supply information about a program when it crashes.

Some commercial compilers also supply a program with this functionality. If you have one of these programs available on your system, you can use the address of the crash supplied by it to help locate the problem.

If anyone knows of any freeware programs that duplicate this functionality or has source code to find the address during a crash, please let me know. Here are three ways to create a map file.

Choose the method you like best. In these examples, I've used sample names such as file. Change the map, executable and object files to ones more relevant to your particular project. On systems such as Windows NT, you can specify what application is run when a program crashes. Windows makes available the ID of the process to debug and an event ID to signal when the debugger finishes calling DebugActiveProcess.

These can be passed via command line to the program listed as Debugger. Setting the auto value for this registry key to 1 causes the program listed as Debugger to automatically run. Setting it to 0 brings up a crash dialog instead.

MinGW is a just-in-time exception handler for mingw. It will automatically install itself as the default debugger in the registry if run with the proper options. For more in depth debugging, you will most likely need the help of a debugger program. Mingw includes gdb Gnu debugger in its distribution. Many people prefer a GUI front end to their debugger. Mingw currently does not supply this in its distribution.

This leaves two options for GUI debuggers. Use one from another compiler distribution or use a GUI front end to gdb. Here are some links for both options. Check the Other compiler distributions section for other compilers with different debuggers.

Some are freeware and some are not. Some are specifically tailored to mingw and others are for more general use. Thanks to Carl-Michael Kleffner for recommending this link. Here's an example. The following is a code sample for a simple C program. Cut and paste it into a file named hello. If you want to create a console mode executable hello. The following is a code sample for a simple Windows program. If you want to create a Windows executable hello.

To get a console screen along with a standard windows application, add the -mconsole flag as well as -mwindows. If you have resources from a resource file. Here's an example that shows how to compile and link in a resource file named resfile.

There are several methods that can be tried in order to create a definition file. This example uses grep and sed. If you have a dll named file.

This example uses Perl. Copy the following Perl script to a file called dll. A def file named dll. You can rename this as needed. You'll also probably want to delete dll. If you don't have any of these tools on your system, you can still use nm to create a def file and edit it by hand through an editor. For example:. Replace the line at the top of dll. Windows programs use WinMain instead of main. However, mingw is set up so that you can use either. Some users on the mingw32 mailing list have noticed ending up with unusually large executable sizes.

This can happen if you leave in debugging information. To make your executables smaller, try linking with the -s switch or use the strip program on the final executable not the object or library files. Compiling without the -g option is another alternative.

Due to binary compatibility issues between different compilers, you cannot directly link in libraries or object code from one compiler to another compiler such as mingw and expect it to work.

The reverse is true as well. Even dlls are not completely portable across compilers. If you want to use a library or objects from one compiler with another, the easiest way to do it is to have the source. You can use the same dll with different compilers with varying degrees of success. You'll need either a.

If you place libraries before the object files that reference them, the linker will be unable to find them. The linker works left-to-right, single pass. The easiest way to avoid the problem is to place all libraries after the object files. It is also recommended that libraries to be linked with should not be repeated on the command line.

While listing the same library more than once works with several linkers, the mingw linker currently has problems with this situation and may leave needed routines out of the link when this is done. The command links in the libraries pdcurses. Although dlls are supposed to be fairly portable across different Windows compilers, accessing dlls through a library file.

The library file formats are specific to particular compilers and cannot be used portably with different compilers unless the compiler provides support for it. See the mingw32 mailing list archives for more portability concerns regarding dlls. You can specify a directory for library files indicated by the -l option by using -L. You can use -v to find out more about the executables being invoked.

Mingw displays compilation and linking errors to stderr instead of stdout. To easily view these errors, you may need to redirect the output to stdout or a file.

Some methods to do so include using one of the following programs:. Some users have had trouble with the dos box closing after building a program and haven't been able to see their errors.

The mingw32 mailing list came up with several suggestions on how to deal with this. One suggestion from Franco Bez is as follows:. By modifying a few Registry Keys - you can add a context menu item Run - stay open , so you simply right click on the Batch file and choose Run - stay open and your batch runs and stays open.

The example below is for Windows NT. If you are using a Windows 95 or 98 system, change all the occurrences of cmd to command. Mingw has some support for COM programs. Work is in progress to improve support. Check the mingw32 mailing list archives for more details on COM and more links to example files. To keep from having to continually type all your compiler commands on the command line, working with a make program is one very good solution. There are several versions of make available both as freeware and commercially.

Here are some URLs:. If you have changes to source code, it may be easier to distribute them as patches than to send the entire code to someone or list the changes by hand. Patching is an automated process of updating files using tools such as patch and diff. Patches can be created by comparing two files with the diff program or from various version control systems such as RCS.

Several versions of diff have been ported to Windows and DOS. There are also several versions of patch available for use in applying patches to source code. One site that includes it is Mumit's site also listed in the Other programming tools section. The example ignores whitespace and compares the old version of file. The output is redirected to a file. Most patches these days also include the -c or -u option which allows programmers to figure out what has changed in a file by viewing the context of the lines around it.

Another common option is -r for working with entire directories instead of single files. The option -p may also be useful. It adds information on what C functions a change appears in. To patch a file, you'll need the original source file old version and the file with the patches created by diff. Here's an example of how to call patch:.

The command patches file. Mingw provides access to the Win32 API. No one's tried this so far. If anyone does successfully accomplish it, please say so and it will be added to this document.

For OWL owners, there is a port with additional features which supports various compilers including the gcc compiler line. Thanks to Greg Chicares for supplying this information.

There are a number of these available. The following are known to have worked with mingw. There are several other libraries out there. If you've had luck with building other programming libraries and would like to see them added to the list, please e-mail information on where these libraries can be found and what you needed to do to build them. You can get access to OpenGL when you install a framework like fltk or wxWindows. You can also install it yourself and use it directly.

The development of C-Free 5. The first version of mingwmake. The latest file update released for C-Free 5. Please see below for more detailed information, EXE file troubleshooting instructions, and free downloads of different versions of mingwmake. Recommended Download: Fix mingwmake. Runtime errors are C-Free errors that occur during "runtime".

Runtime is pretty self-explanatory; it means that these EXE errors are triggered when mingwmake. In most cases, mingwmake. Most of these mingwmake. Generally, C-Free will be unable to start without resolving these errors. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem. Thus, it's critical to make sure your anti-virus is kept up-to-date and scanning regularly.

Finding the source of the mingwmake. Although most of these EXE errors affecting mingwmake. This can occur due to poor programming on behalf of Program Arts, conflicts with other software or 3rd-party plug-ins, or caused by damaged and outdated hardware.

Also, these types of mingwmake. If you're encountering one of the error messages above, follow these troubleshooting steps to resolve your mingwmake. These troubleshooting steps are listed in the recommended order of execution. When the first two steps haven't solved your issue, it might be a good idea to run Windows Update. Many mingwmake. To run Windows Update, please follow these easy steps:. If Windows Update failed to resolve the mingwmake. This could possibly be done, but no-one has yet bothered, afaik.

To find out the flavour of make that 'perl Makefile. PL' honours, you run perl -V:make which is what Anonymous Monk was getting at. PerlMonks graciously bestowed by Tim Vroom. PerlMonks somehow became entangled with The Perl Foundation. Perl Monk, Perl Meditation. Need Help?? Cheers, Rob.