Beginning C++ 2, Creating the Build Environment

Creating the Build Environment

In this article I’ll describe how to setup the Visual C++ 2008 build environment on the Windows platform.

Windows Platforms and the SDK
The simplest Windows build environment consists of just the operating system and the freely downloadable platform SDK. The platform SDK consists of all the header files, library files, debug files (pdbs) that are needed to develop applications on Windows. It also comes with the compilers and linkers needed to compile any of C++ or C# programs you might create. However it lacks a User Interface for development so you would have to do all your development with the command prompt and a text editor.

An alternative free windows platform is to use Visual Studio C++ Express Edition. This package includes a slightly older version of the platform SDK but it has the excellent Visual Studio Integrated Development Environment (IDE) packaged in with it.

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