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An alternative to VC++ and MFC

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17 Oct 20032 min read 178.6K   32   36
The article describes a platform independent alternative to VC++ and MFC

Sample Image - VisualWx.gif

Introduction

If you are looking for an Open Source Free alternative to the VC++, gcc is the right choice. GCC is the GNU Compiler Collection, which currently contains front ends for C, C++, Objective-C, Fortran, Java, and Ada, as well as libraries for these languages. It is available for almost all the platforms. Here I will describe the various distributions of gcc and tools for Windows platform. The home page of gcc is at http://gcc.gnu.org/

GCC Distributions

There are two major windows distributions for gcc, CygWin and MingW.

CygWin

Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows. It acts as a Linux emulation layer providing substantial Linux API functionality and it also provides Linux look and feel. In this environment it provides gcc for creating your windows programs.

MingW

MingW is Minimalist GNU For Windows. Following is the description of MingW from there site

MinGW: A collection of freely available and freely distributable Windows specific header files and import libraries combined with GNU toolsets that allow one to produce native Windows programs that do not rely on any 3rd-party DLLs.

Besides the compiler it includes make tool, resource compiler, Profiler (gprof), strip ( for stripping debug information to make executable's size smaller), debugger, library archiver and many more tools.

Development Environments - DevC++

There are many development environments which can be used for developing with gcc. DevC++ is one of them. It comes with mingW version of gcc. But it can be also used in combination with CygWin. It has nice support for creating projects, source level debugging, profiling etc.

Windows Framework - wxWindows

Using a C++ compiler with a development environment and win32 api calls we can create windows applications. But it is much easier to write programs if we have a Windows Framework like MFC. There are many such platform indendent GUI frameworks available. I personally like wxWindows. It is a MFC type GUI framework and comes with many sample programs to get you started. A dialog editor also comes with it to visually create dialogs. Various libraries like jpeg, tiff, zlib , png and regular expression are also included with it.

A tool named visualWx is available freely which lets you create GUI applications visually for wxWindows. The screenshot at the top shows this tool. It has support for wxWindows for c++, python and perl.

Conclusion

Using the combination of a free compiler (gcc), a development environment (DevC++) , A GUI Framework (wxWindows) and a visual GUI editor (visualWx) we can find a platform independent alternative to Microsoft's Visual C++.

License

This article has no explicit license attached to it but may contain usage terms in the article text or the download files themselves. If in doubt please contact the author via the discussion board below.

A list of licenses authors might use can be found here


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Comments and Discussions

 
GeneralCodeBlocks - By far best free GUI Pin
John M. Drescher25-Jul-07 1:50
John M. Drescher25-Jul-07 1:50 
GeneralVisualWx gives me errors! Pin
Anonymous5-Sep-05 10:00
Anonymous5-Sep-05 10:00 
GeneralRe: VisualWx gives me errors! Pin
Lord Kixdemp5-Sep-05 10:06
Lord Kixdemp5-Sep-05 10:06 
Generaleclipse/CDT Pin
Hirotaka Niitsuma21-Apr-05 5:30
Hirotaka Niitsuma21-Apr-05 5:30 
GeneralRe: eclipse/CDT Pin
benjamin2326-Mar-08 12:56
benjamin2326-Mar-08 12:56 
GeneralResources Pin
Anonymous20-May-04 11:17
Anonymous20-May-04 11:17 
GeneralRe: Resources Pin
Anonymous3-Aug-04 8:43
Anonymous3-Aug-04 8:43 
GeneralGood shed of light Pin
Anthony_Yio4-Dec-03 16:42
Anthony_Yio4-Dec-03 16:42 
GeneralReal world coding examples Pin
Michael P Butler19-Oct-03 22:32
Michael P Butler19-Oct-03 22:32 
GeneralRe: Real world coding examples Pin
Kochise19-Oct-03 23:25
Kochise19-Oct-03 23:25 
GeneralRe: Real world coding examples Pin
Gurvinder Singh20-Oct-03 16:58
Gurvinder Singh20-Oct-03 16:58 
GeneralAutomated apllication code generation ? Pin
Kochise21-Oct-03 23:47
Kochise21-Oct-03 23:47 
GeneralRe: Real world coding examples Pin
John M. Drescher20-Oct-03 5:42
John M. Drescher20-Oct-03 5:42 
GeneralRe: Real world coding examples Pin
Gurvinder Singh20-Oct-03 17:01
Gurvinder Singh20-Oct-03 17:01 
GeneralRe: Real world coding examples Pin
John M. Drescher20-Oct-03 17:07
John M. Drescher20-Oct-03 17:07 
GeneralTry sourceforge.net Pin
TW22-Oct-03 22:33
TW22-Oct-03 22:33 
QuestionWhat about Qt ? Pin
Sebastien Lorion19-Oct-03 10:45
Sebastien Lorion19-Oct-03 10:45 
AnswerRe: What about Qt ? Pin
Gisle Vanem19-Oct-03 12:05
Gisle Vanem19-Oct-03 12:05 
AnswerRe: What about Qt ? Pin
Neville Franks19-Oct-03 12:13
Neville Franks19-Oct-03 12:13 
Sébastien Lorion wrote:
It is my opinion that the GUI toolkit Qt would be a better choice ...

Maybe but:

Single Platform
Developers, Professional Edition, Enterprise Edition
1 $ 1550 $ 2330

Qt DuoPack
Developers, Professional Edition, Enterprise Edition
1 $ 2325 $ 3495

Eek! | :eek:

This adds up to quite a bit for a single developer like me.

Neville Franks, Author of ED for Windows. Free Trial at www.getsoft.com
GeneralRe: What about Qt ? Pin
Sebastien Lorion19-Oct-03 16:26
Sebastien Lorion19-Oct-03 16:26 
GeneralRe: What about Qt ? Pin
Claudius Mokler19-Oct-03 23:12
Claudius Mokler19-Oct-03 23:12 
GeneralOpera is based on QT ! Pin
Kochise19-Oct-03 23:28
Kochise19-Oct-03 23:28 
GeneralRe: Opera is based on QT ! Pin
Claudius Mokler19-Oct-03 23:43
Claudius Mokler19-Oct-03 23:43 
GeneralRe: What about Qt ? Pin
EpicBoy20-Oct-03 9:48
EpicBoy20-Oct-03 9:48 
GeneralRe: What about Qt ? Pin
Jim Crafton20-Oct-03 4:08
Jim Crafton20-Oct-03 4:08 

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