D. J. Bernstein
Data structures and program structures
MCS 260, Spring 2001

Programming at home

Connecting to icarus

You can create an icarus terminal on your Windows computer at home if you have dialup PPP access to the Internet.

After you dial in, click on Start, then Run. Type telnet. Open a connection to icarus.uic.edu.

If your Windows installation is so old that it doesn't include telnet, download the ACCC NSKit.

Compiling programs on Windows

You can write, compile, and run programs on your Windows computer at home.

Windows includes editors, but it doesn't include a compiler, so you need to install one. I recommend MinGW, a Windows version of gcc, because I've heard that the installation is very easy: download gcc-2.95.2-msvcrt.exe, run it, and tell it to install in C:\GCC-2.95.2. You can then compile and run foo.c inside a DOS window by typing

     PATH=C:\GCC-2.95.2\BIN;%PATH%
     gcc -o foo foo.c
     foo

You can use MinGW to build graphical programs. See the MinGW FAQ for more information.

Other free Windows compilers: Cygwin, another Windows version of gcc; lcc-win32, another UNIX-style compiler; and Borland C++ Compiler 5.5.

Running UNIX at home

You can put the UNIX operating system on your computer at home. UNIX includes pico, gcc, gdb, etc. (You don't have to remove Windows to do this; if you set up a ``dual-boot'' system, your computer will ask you each time you turn it on whether you want to start Windows or UNIX.)

There are many free flavors of UNIX: Caldera Linux, Corel Linux, Mandrake Linux, Red Hat Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, etc.