Best Windows IDE + compiler (that's free)?

[shaneedward]

What is the best for working with Irrlicht and running on Windows that is also free? Are there easy to follow tutorials for setting it up? If so, where?

[finger007]

Are you aware that you are likely to start a new flamewar here?

As to your question:
IDE: Search the forum for IDE, you will find several discussed here already. Then pick the one you like.

Tutorial: afecelis did an excellent one on code::blocks and ms-compiler.
Go to Irrlicht-HP and click on "tutorials". There you'll find the one by afecelis and others.
Note: You'll have to scoll down a bit to find em

cheers

[shaneedward]

No, sorry. I wasn't aware that I'd start a flamewar. It was an innocent question. I'd like a straight answer but it doesn't look like I'm going to get one.

[The Jackal]

For me the best IDE is DEV-C++ whith Ming-gw because is fully supported by Irrlicht and it is open-source.

[kburkhart84]

Since you said for windows.. I use Visual C++ Express, the temporarily free version of it. It is free forever, but only available to get for a limited time. The IDE and compiler are commercial quality, but don't expect to run it in linux. I've heard of code blocks as well, which supposedly has a good IDE, but I've never used it.

[shaneedward]

For me the best IDE is DEV-C++ whith Ming-gw because is fully supported by Irrlicht and it is open-source.

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check it out. Eclipse with Cygwin is too big and complicated a mess (at least for this newb). I see that Dev-C++ already has the compiler all set up and in the download package. That makes things less complicated. Less complicated is good.

I have to say though, Cygwin is nifty. It's pretty cool to play with a *nix command line under Windows but I don't want to play with Cygwin, I want to make 3d stuff happen with Irrlicht.

[shaneedward]

Since you said for windows.. I use Visual C++ Express, the temporarily free version of it. It is free forever, but only available to get for a limited time. The IDE and compiler are commercial quality, but don't expect to run it in linux. I've heard of code blocks as well, which supposedly has a good IDE, but I've never used it.

I don't know the difference between commercial quality vs. not. I'm a beginner. I'm an artist, not a programmer but I'm trying to learn. Whatever works and requires the least amount of trouble to get started. I guess I should have been more specific about my needs.

I like Linux so I don't want to work with something that would make it difficult or impossible to port what I'm working on. But that's a long way off, I'd be happy if I could simply get the "Hello World!" tutorial to compile and run properly. The point is though, I'd rather not use Microsoft's IDE.

[finger007]

I like Linux so I don't want to work with something that would make it difficult or impossible to port what I'm working on. But that's a long way off, I'd be happy if I could simply get the "Hello World!" tutorial to compile and run properly. The point is though, I'd rather not use Microsoft's IDE.

Then maybe dev-cpp is a good choice for you. There's lots of howtos and a huge community behind it, so you have a large platform to get answers to your questions.
To start go here: http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/tut_devcpp.html
Seems a bit outdated, maybe some things have changed in between...

If you want to work on linux as well, give codeblocks a try. I started with that one and like it
Setup: http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/tut_codeblocks.html

Regards,
finger007

p.s.:
As I can see from your first answer you got me wrong a bit. I didn't mean to offend you. I just pointed the directions to read on since the information you seemed to be looking for is rather easy to find on the homepage of Irrlicht.
So - no hard feelings, eh? And good luck with your project!

[Rohit]

VC Toolkit 2003 7.1 command line compiler(around 27 MBs) is free and produces highly optimized and compact code for irrlicht .

Then install Codeblocks IDE latest version(around 3 MBs) . Codeblocks will automatically detect your VC compiler(you can have MinGW or DMC).Unzip Irrlicht so that you get C:\Irrlicht directory structure (i mean rename irrlicht-0.14.0 to Irrlicht).
Now , in Codeblocks
File->NewProject->IrrlichtProject->Create->Save
(***CodeBlocks has a pre-defined "IrrlichtProject" template , so you dont have to add any includes and libs and link libraries***)
Press F9 (to compile and run)
You ll see a Character in front of you ! (The 1 st irrlicht example)

***There is also a CodeBlocks version for Linux , so you can use it
on both win and linux , without the hassle of getting used to some
new IDE like kDEVELOP or Anjuta***

For GUI creation , you can use CEGUI library .

[Puck6633]

Well if you want my humble opinion GCC is definitely the way to go as far as a compiler, since it works on windows and linux (and maybe mac too, though I've never really looked into that) and also works with windows 9x platforms, something the visual C toolkit doesn't do.

As far as an IDE I've personally found that Dev-CPP is more mature and stable, but Code::Blocks is more feature rich and easier to use. the best thing to do would be to try them both and see which one suits you better.

[Guest]

CodeBlocks ...
or Eclipse w/ CDT if you got a good machine,
eclipse has a really nice gdb frontend.

[afecelis]

I'm a total fan of Codeblocks with VC toolkit 2003. Both are free. And to round things up, install GCC and also use Codeblocks with it. Oh yes, get GDB as debugger!