I’ve been coding for a while with OpenGL under Linux, using the GCC compiler. Now, I want to change platform to Win32. Is there a open source compiler (non-commercial thus) that is suitable for use with OpenGL? I heard some things about MinGW and Cygwin. Are they capable of doing the things I want?
I’ve had some experience with DJGPP, works fine but is limited to DOS…
Do you mean by non-commercial, free? If so you can download free editions of Borland C++ Builder or Borland Delphi from Borland’s website www.borland.com. They are usually known as Foundation editions and I beleive they will work fine for OpenGL, even though I didn’t try them. However, I tried J Builder foundation and it has all the features I need. You can download them unless you want features related to database and enterprise applications.
I use Bloodshed Dev C++ and swear by it. http://www.bloodshed.net/ it’s easy to use and provides a sample app showing how to set up gl under win32. The editor has a few bugs but nothing that can’t be worked around.
Cygwin might be pretty good if you’re used to programming in Linux. It’s a pretty nice tool and I’ve heard the latest version will even let you compile and run X, though I haven’t tried that yet.
M$ offers their 2003 visual c++ WITHOUT the IDE for free. You may even couple this command line compiler with Eclipse. But I haven’t gone this route yet (as I’m stuck withe the Eclipse + CDT + CygWin + OpenGL route).