Re: C23 thoughts and opinions

On 09/06/2024 21:40, Michael S wrote:

I can only tell you what works well for me. I can't force you to use it.
Also, I can't prevent you from trying to use something that no longer
works well due to absence of support, i.e. old msys/mingw.
 

I was trying to install the LATEST version of gcc on Windows! That would 13.x, which I've done before, perhaps hitting on the right link by chance.
'gcc' /can/ be run from a pure Windows command line, as I've been using versions of it for years.
But they don't make it easy, as gcc is perceived to be tied to WSL MSYS2 MINGW CYGWIN.
I've had another go at this elusive compiler, this time apparently successful. Here are the steps I used:
* Start from mingw-w64.com. Ignore where it says it's a 'complete
   runtime environment for gcc'. There is also an actual compiler at the
   end of the process!
* Click on Downloads on the left
* There is a list of prebuilt toolchains. The promising ones are
   w64devkit, MingW-W64-builds, and possibly WinLibs.com?
   I clicked on MinGW-W64-builds.
* That takes you down the page to MingW-Builds, but this is where I had
   a bit of luck: as this is a one-line entry, I missed it and starting
   reading about WinLibs.com instead. But where are the downloads? The
   link is in the small print on the last line of that section.
* It you to winlibs.com. This is looks disconcertingly like a 1990s
   website. It surely can't be the right place? Just don't click on
   MinGW-w64 as that just takes you back to square one.
* Scroll down to Downloads. There are 16 to choose from for each
   version. I clicked (by mistake - I think) on the version /with/ LLVM
   etc, but I  don't know what the difference is. I chose the MSVCRT
   version.
The end result was a 1.4GB installation of gcc 14.1.0. Using 'gcc hello.c -Os -s' gives of 48KB (with 10.3 it was 88KB). It still imports msvcrt.dll, but not printf (it does import vfprintf).