I am currently taking a course in C programming. This is virtually free credit for me since I’ve been programming in C++ for many years, through which I’ve become familiar with C. The course includes three lectures held by Dr Jonas Skeppstedt who wrote the second validated C99 compiler.

This course includes four assignments and naturally these were meant to be done on a Unix system with GCC. However, as the counterproductive Linux-hater which I am I decided to do it in Windows Vista with MinGW. Here is my step-by-step guide to compiling crap in C99 with MinGW on Vista:

1. Install MinGW. Does this seem easy? It is! Just download the “Automated Installer” from Sourceforge.net and run it.
2. Create your working directory anywhere you want and make a .bat file with these lines:

   @ECHO OFF
   SET MINGWROOT=C:\MinGW
   SET MINGWBIN=%MINGWROOT%\bin
   SET MINGWINC=%MINGWROOT%\include
   SET MINGWLIB=%MINGWROOT%\lib
   SET MINGWGCC=%MINGWROOT%\libexec\gcc\mingw32\3.4.5
   SET MINGWWBI=%MINGWROOT%\mingw32\bin
   SET MINGWWSC=%MINGWROOT%\mingw32\bin\ldscripts
   SET MINGWPATH=%MINGWBIN%;%MINGWINC%;%MINGWLIB%;%MINGWGCC%;%MINGWWBI%;%MINGWWSC%
   
   SET PATH=%MINGWPATH%;%PATH%
   
   cmd

   This saves you the trouble of having to edit Vistas Environment Variables, which is not a good idea anyway since (1) you dont need to and (2) if you are unlucky you can get conflicts with Cygwin or other programs

3. Start up your batch file and do something like

   gcc -std=c99 test.c -o test

The C:/Mingw directory above is of course replaced with your MinGW installation directory.