How to Install Quincy and MinGW (Free ANSI C++ for Windows)

Intro

Software that is developed and distributed under so called GNU Copyleft is called GNU Software. That more or less means that it is available for free under condition that you must not resell it or sell it as a part of something else that you developed. Among many available C and C++ compilers there is one for Windows, called MinGW. Using the pure "compiler" would require accessing it from the so called console mode (DOS Window). because that approach is not very convenient someone wrote a simple text editor that interfaces nicely to MinGW and called it Quincy. You can download MinGW and Quincy from several Web sites. The original Web sites are located at:   MinGW   Quincy  .

If you do not want to spend some time browsing through those sites and learning how to install it yourself you can use the prepared version. It will still require downloading two files (respectively 13MB and 1.2MB). To minimize the network traffic these files are available only to computers located within the campus network. Although files are large the good news is that the version of compiler is relatively up to date, and contains both ANSI C and C++ with STL and a very good editor and compilation integrated environment.

Installation

1. Download the file MinGW2003.exe
2. Download the file Quincy2002.exe
   Save the file somewhere to your hard drive. You can delete them later or better keep just in case you needed to reinstall the compiler.
3. Run MinGW2003.exe. You will be asked to provide the location where to install the MinGW compiler. The instructor suggests installing it in C:\Program Files\MinGW.
4. Quincy2002.exe. This is a self-extracting archive file and it contains preinstalled Quincy editor. You will be asked where to unpack the files. Please answer C:\. That will allow installation of Quincy to C:\Program Files\Quincy.
5. Add Quincy to the start menu (location: C:\Program Files\Quincy\quincy.exe)
6. Run Quincy for the first time and set the compiler that is used to MinGW. From the program manu select Tools and then set Complier paths to C:\Program Files\MinGW
7. Congratulations! You have just got yourself an excellent complete and yet free C++ compiler.