A terribly newbie question.

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Alex the Bold - 29 Dec 2005 15:32 GMT

This is going to sound silly, but well, I've reached the end of my
patience hunting for the answer. Here goes:

I'm trying to learn C++. I'm running OS X. Can someone point me toward
a resource (or just tell me -- I'm quite willing to have the answer
just handed to me at this point) that will tell me, simply and
specifically, what compiler I should be using? None of my "Hello,
World!" exercises will compile.

Thanks.

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vze35xda@verizon.net - 29 Dec 2005 16:21 GMT

/usr/bin/g++ (OS X 10.4.3 with XCode 2.2)

It does sound like you have not installed the developer tools. You
might check if they are there /Developer should be on your hard drive.
If not check in /Applications/Installers and see if the Developer tools
are there. If not go to http://developer.apple.com/ and download them.
If you are not a member you will have to join but it's free.

After you install them you should have all the tools and I would
suggest you try XCode as a development environment unless you wish to
work on the command line. XCode is a nice tool that integrates GNU
C,GDB and a pretty good editor in a nice package. It also organizes
all your code for a program in a project that allows you to easily
access any part.

--jim

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Michael Ash - 29 Dec 2005 20:41 GMT

> It does sound like you have not installed the developer tools. You
> might check if they are there /Developer should be on your hard drive.
> If not check in /Applications/Installers and see if the Developer tools
> are there. If not go to http://developer.apple.com/ and download them.
> If you are not a member you will have to join but it's free.

Even if you have an installer in /Applications/Installers, check the
version before you install it. The latest is 2.2, and depending on when
you got your computer, it's likely that the on-disk version is earlier
than that. Xcode has been getting significantly better with each version,
and the other tools (like gcc) have been getting fixes and useful
additions as well. Of course, if your connection is slow enough that
downloading an 800MB file is painful, then you probably would prefer the
on-disk version in any case.

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Michael Ash
Rogue Amoeba Software

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Mac Forum / Programming / Mac Programming / December 2005

A terribly newbie question.