Re: [Mingw-users] How do I use MinGW?

[Peter B. S. <pb...@ca...>]

Peter Henningsen asked:
> ... and double click on make.exe. The big problem with this 
> is that the Windows console disappears immediately after 
> printing an error message, giving me no time to read it. 
> How would I do this properly?

To which Greg Chicares answered:
> Open a command-line session.
> mkdir and chdir to any directory you like.
> (It's the same as linux except you have to use '\' instead of '/').
> Put your files there.

Let me add to that a reminder to set the environment correctly,
especially if you have multiple directories containing various
library / object files or if you have a nonstandard installation
like mine.

I work in three languages - Clipper for my "day job", Turbo 
(DOS) Pascal as a hobby, and I'm just learning MinGW & 
C to get familiar with the world o' Windows (and to become
more proficient in C).  I can't very well have my DOS environment
packed full of every possible library and binary location that I
might conceivably use, so I have three "preparation" batch files
I run depending on which language I'll be working in.  After I
open a DOS session as Greg described, I run PREPCLIP.BAT
to set up the LIB, OBJ, and binary paths for Clipper, or
PREPPAS.BAT to tell Turbo Pascal where to find the binaries
and units, or PREPC.BAT to set up the environment required
by GCC.

PREPC.BAT sets up the following:
 - Adds \DEV\GCC\BIN to the binary search path
 - sets CPLUS_INCLUDE_PATH and C_INCLUDE_PATH to 
   point to \DEV\GCC\INCLUDE and \DEV\GCC\INCLUDE\W32API
- sets LIBRARY_PATH to point to \DEV\GCC\LIB and
  \DEV\GCC\LIB\W32API

Each of my PREP*.BAT files also finishes off by chdir'ing me to
the folder containing my source code for that language (e.g., 
\DEV\PASCAL\SOURCE, etc.) but that's just because I'm
too lazy to type CD \DEV\PASCAL\SOURCE each time :-)

Peter H, it sounds like your main problem is that you are
not adding the location of GCC.EXE to your DOS search
path, so unless you are at the binary directory, DOS can't
find the EXE files.  Just as with *nix, DOS/Windows needs
to know where to load the binaries via the PATH environment
variable.  Even if you dump all the source files, libraries, etc.
into one directory and run your make there, at the very least
you need to add \GCC\BIN (or whatever) to the PATH:
PATH=%PATH%;\GCC\BIN

Good luck!

----------------
Peter B. Steiger
Cheyenne, WY