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 separately. However, Quincy comes with minimal distribution of MinGW that is suffcient to compile console and GUI programs for Windows in ANSI C and C++ with STL. The original Web sites are located at:   MinGW   Quincy  .

Installation

1. Quincy2005.exe. This file contains full installation of the editor that runs the compiler. By default it installs to C:\Program Files\Quincy which is a good choice.
2. Optionally Run MinGW.exe. You will be asked to select packages and later provide the location where to install the MinGW compiler. The base tools are marked to be installed by default. The instructor urges you to mark also at least GCC C++ compiler. The instructor suggests installing it in C:\Program Files\Quincy\MinGW. This step requires Internet connect as installation files need to be downloaded first.
3. Run Quincy for the first time and set the compiler that is used to MinGW. From the program manu select Tools and then verify that Complier path points to C:\Program Files\Quincy\MinGW
4. Congratulations! You have just got yourself an excellent complete and yet free C++ compiler.