Free C compilers and UNIX-like enviroments for PCs

Many of the students have access to a personal computer, usually a machine running MS Windows. The following tools could be used for developing and testing the programs required for the course assignments. Make sure (regardless of the tool that you may use) that you have tested your programs in the CS Department's computing environment (workstations running Solaris). The following tools have been tested extensively:

• Princeton's lcc is an ANSI C compiler that can generate code for the ALPHA, SPARC, MIPS and Intel x86 family of processors. Available at http://www.cs.princeton.edu/software/lcc/.
  lcc-win32 is a version of lcc for windows. Available (along with manuals, etc) at http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~lcc-win32/. Copy is also available locally.
• Borland's free compiler (bcc32), part of Borland's C++Builder product. Copy available locally.
• Borland also offers Turbo C 2.01, a popular MS-DOS compiler of the late '80s - early 90's that is now given for free. Copy available locally, also check http://community.borland.com/article/0,1410,20841,00.html for more details.
• Bloodshed Dev-C++ is a full-featured Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for C/C++ under Windows. It uses Mingw port of GCC as its compiler. Dev-C++ can also be used in combination with Cygwin or any other GCC based compiler. Available at http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html.
• Watcom offers a previously commercial C/C++ compiler that has now gone opensource and is distributed for free. Available at http://www.openwatcom.org/download/download_licenses.html.
• Digital Mars is another company offering free C/C++ Windows compilers, available at http://www.digitalmars.com/
• Pacific C is HI-TECH Software's freeware C MS-DOS compiler. Available at http://www.htsoft.com/products/pacific.html.
• Cygnus tool suite (Cygwin), part of the GNU open-source project. Provides a terminal window emulating the functionality of a UNIX terminal. Includes the gcc compiler. Copy available locally.
• DJGPP, a free compiler for personal computers. Includes an editor and a graphical development environment (RHIDE). Copy available locally.

An alternative would be to install an open-source version of the UNIX operating system on your machine. This comes with a development environment comprising the gcc compiler and the gdb debugger (among other tools). This option requires a certain level of "experience", but provides you with an extremely powerful run-time environment. Make your choice ...

• Linux: Various "distributions" are available. Two of the most popular distributions these days seem to be Red Hat and SuSe. The FTP server of the National Technical University at Athens mirrors these distributions.
• FreeBSD: a powerful UNIX-clone, maintained by the FreeBSD Foundation.

Suggestions for additions/improvements to this page are more than welcome.

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Page created by Manolis Marazakis,
additions by Manolis Lourakis