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How to download and install Microsoft's Visual Studio C/C++ compiler without Visual Studio - Stack Overflow
What is the proper way to get a compiler for c/c++
What C compiler do you recommend for Windows?
mingw works flawlessly
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Factsheet
What you want is called the "Windows SDK", which contains everything you need to build applications on Windows, except the IDE (Visual Studio).
It comes with all necessary libraries, header files, a compiler, nmake et cetera, and a handy shortcut for a preconfigured cmd.exe that puts all of these tools in your PATH. If you know what you are doing, this is what you want to use.
What version of the SDK you want depends on the system you are compiling on, but you will find all of them on the Microsoft website. For Windows 10 for example, the SDK can be found here: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/downloads/windows-10-sdk
Be aware, though, that the windows' compiler cl.exe can be a bit tricky at times, and nmake is not what you expect when you only learned GNUmake. If all you want is to compile on Windows, without having to drag 20+ Gigabytes of IDE around, then the SDK is an option to consider.
(We are using virtual machines with a preinstalled Windows SDK quite successfully in lectures and exercises.)
As of Windows 8 the SDK no longer contains the build tools for C++ based applications. These are now only contained in a Visual Studio installation.
You can download the compiler and related stuff as part of the Visual Studio Build Tools. The 2017 version is here:
https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/#build-tools-for-visual-studio-2017
I'm somewhat new to c++, but have a fairly good understanding of programming in c++. I've created few 2d games too.
But I have few question regarding the c/c++ compiler. When I first try to download a compiler, I ended up downloading MSYS from mingw-64 website. But there are other sources too which kind of cofuses me to think why all of these exists. I need to know where this all begins, where is the original compiler published, why there is so many variants for the compiler. For example I can download it from mingw-64 and winlibs website. In mingw-64 website, there I have download msys, WSL or cygwin. Not a direct compiler. Even official GNU website have links to the other compilers. In winlibs website it also includes mingw-64 compiler and gcc and few other variants like ucrt runtime(posix, mcf), msvcrt(posix, mcf). (Then again what is posix and mcf) Can someone explain these stuff, what is the proper way get the compiler, what these other variants I've mentioned do and when to choose them.
At the end of the day I've no trouble editing some code using my code editor and compling for a simple program using compiler I downloaded from a random website. But I need to know exactly why and when to choose either of them.