Home Compiling Guide

by **Corenat Rovarnus** 2015-09-24, 18:38

Trigger Warning: This guide is heavily biased towards Windows users.

Are you tired of piping your entire programming environment from Grace?
Fed up with your editor "lagging" even though it shouldn't even need an internet connection?
Want to compile your C programs on your own computer? Well now you can! In fact, you've been capable of doing it for probably over a decade but were too much of a nooblord to find out!

Here's how:

Step 1: Get Editor
Get the latest version of Emacs, or whatever editor you prefer to use
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/
Scroll down to the "Obtaining" section, click the "nearby GNU mirror" link.
It should automatically take you to a file index.

For Macintosh/Linux: Scroll down and download the file with the largest version number (24.5 as of this writing) and a "tar.gz" extension.
For Windows: There will probably be a windows folder at the very bottom or top of the page, if not try a different mirror. Click that, and then download the file with the largest version number and a ".zip" extention.

Step 2: Get Compiler
For Windows users you will now need to acquire MinGW, which gives you all the power of GCC without any of the hassle of selfcompiling or what have you. Here's the download:
http://mingw-w64.org/doku.php/download/mingw-builds
Or use http://www.mingw.org/ if you're a pleb and you use a 32-bit system.

Installation tips:
Don't be confused by the options. Just make sure you pick x86_64 architecture, POSIX threading, SEH (or sjlj if SEH is not an option) and the latest version of GCC (5.3 as of this writing), that'll be the top dropdown menu.

Step 3: ????
By now you should have everything you need, this step is just about optimization. Navigate to the folder where MinGW is installed/extracted. Copy the mingw-w64.bat file onto your desktop, and open it up for editing. (Maybe using emacs?)
There will be a part that says cd "C:\", change that to wherever your home directory is or where your programs are going to be. For your emacs shortcut, right click->properties and change the "Start in" field to your home directory as well.
This eliminates the general startup hassle of navigating to where the folders are.

Step 4: PROFIT!