Compiling and Running Software

Many of the assignments for this course require you to compile and run small .c and c++ programs. You may do this on any machine or architecture you like, including Linux, Windows, or Mac OS X. We will endeavor to make sure the code runs on all three of these platforms, but you must do some work on this as well. Here are a set of tips, observations, etc. that will help you get going on compiling and running the code.

• Pick one architecture to do your work and stick with it if possible. Best to even pick one actual machine and stick with that. You'll see why from some of the other points below.
• Edit the waveio.h file, and change the #define to either LITTLENDIAN or BIGENDIAN, depending on your platform. Windows and Linux on Intel/PC processors use LITTLENDIAN. Macs use BIGENDIAN. Why is this necessary? See this interesting Historical Article.
• Much of the code for this class works in a simple command line interface. This is the shell for Linux and Mac, and is the old-fashioned DOSBox (command.com) for Windows machines. You need to have a compiler, and there are many. gcc, cc, CC or maybe others should be native on Linux and Mac (if developer tools have been installed) machines. Windows machines may or may not, but often do not have a compiler. Free C compilers include lcc (originally from Princeton!) gcc via cygwin standalone, bcc from Borland,

  , gcc via MingW for Windows, THIS IS RECOMMENDED

  You can try the .Net compiler (cl) which is free from MicroSoft. For this, you need both the Framework, download and install this first. and the SDK, download and install this second. NOTE: I was unable to get this to work from a clean platform.

• Different compilers react differently to various things. For example, some Linux compilers (gcc) need the #include file malloc.h, while most other compilers (even gcc on other platforms like Mac OS X) have no idea what malloc.h is. If your compiler complains about some #include, just comment it out and try again. If it complains that it can't find some function, then let us know. Read on...
• One thing that you might experience on some compilers is the math.h functions, like sin(), cos(), pow(), etc. aren't automatically linked. To fix this just add -lm to the end of your compiler directive to explicitly tell the compiler to link the math library:
  gcc -o test test.c -lm
• MORE COMING AS NECESSARY