WindowsTools

Free Development Tools for Win95/98/NT/2K/XP

Borland C++ 5.5 Compiler

Borland has released their latest compiler for free. This distribution only includes the command-level tools and not the IDE. It can be obtained at http://www.borland.com/downloads/download_cbuilder.html

I give this compiler 5 stars.

Borland TurboDebugger for C++ 5.5 Compiler

Borland has also released for free the debugger to go with the above compiler. It can be found at http://www.borland.com/downloads/download_cbuilder.html

Code::Blocks

Code::Blocks is a free C++ IDE.

http://www.codeblocks.org/

MemProof

MemProof is a freeware utility designed to find allocation and deallocation errors in an Delphi or Borland C++ 3.x+ application. It can be found at http://www.automatedqa.com/downloads/memproof/

Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2008

Microsoft released a free version of their Microsoft C/C++ Optimizing Compiler and Linker. It includes the C Runtime Library and the C++ Standard Library, including the Standard Template Library, and the Microsoft .NET Framework Common Language Runtime. See http://www.microsoft.com/express/vc/

Also one needs to install the [Microsoft Platform SDK]

VIDE

VIDE is a GUI development environment that supports the Borland C++ 5.5 command line compiler above. It also can be configured to run with the Cygwin or MinGW? gcc and gdb as well as java compilers. It can be found at http://www.objectcentral.com/

Cygnus WIN32-Unix emulator / Cygwin

A complete port of major Unix utilities and emulation of Posix functionality for all versions of Windows since Win95, except for Windows CE. It seems to work best on NT kernels. Includes gcc, binutils, shellutils, fileutils, textutils, flex, bison, make, awk, etc. Has nice setup tool that allows package installation and deinstallation. It can be found at http://www.cygwin.com/

This is the probably easiest and most painless way to get your favorite mud server to compile and run on Windows. It's also a great way to get your feet wet in unix (linux) before running your mud on a host shell. Highly recommended now.

A number of languages are available as cygwin packages. gcj - the gnu java compiler, which is sometimes flaky. gpc - the gnu pascal compiler (I love Pascal), gnu ada compiler, gnu fortran, guile, lisp, perl and ruby.

LCC-Win32

A C compiler for Win32 systems. Not a bad compiler at all. Pretty fast and competitive with the big boys. It comes with a very nice feature rich editor that has things you wouldn't normally expect. It's worth checking out even if you don't use the compiler. It can be found at http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~lcc-win32/

DJGPP

A free 32-bit C compiler for DOS. This site also has links to DOS sockets stacks. Yes Virginia, you can even run a internet connected mud on DOS too. It can be found at http://www.delorie.com/

Digital Mars C++

Digital Mars C and C++ Compilers for Win32, Win16, DOS32 and DOS. Great potential. Author has tons of compiler experience. Also a language called D may be found here. It can be found at http://www.digitalmars.com/

MinGW / MSYS

MinGW is a collection of freely available and freely distributable Windows specific header files and import libraries combined with GNU toolsets that allow one to produce native Windows programs that do not rely on any 3rd-party C runtime DLLs. MSYS is a Minimal SYStem to provide POSIX - Bourne configure scripts the ability to execute and create a Makefile used by make. http://www.mingw.org/

Blooshed Dev C++

Yet another port of gcc to Windows. They've also ported gnu pascal. It can be found at http://www.bloodshed.net/

I haven't used it, however even more important is the wonderful archives and list of other free compiler tools they have at their site. [The Compilers resources page]

Perl

Activestate Perl for Win95/NT. It can be found at http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActivePerl/

Perl distributions also exist for Cygwin and MinGW?

Python

Python is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language. It is often compared to Tcl, Perl, Scheme or Java. The Python implementation is portable: it runs on many brands of UNIX, on Windows, OS/2, Mac, Amiga, and many other platforms. http://www.python.org/

Ruby

Ruby is the interpreted scripting language for quick and easy object-oriented programming. It has many features to process text files and to do system management tasks (as in Perl). It is simple, straight-forward, extensible, and portable. There's a one-click Windows installation, and one can also compile it with BC++, VC++, MinGW?, and Cygwin. Exists as a Cygwin package (see above). http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/ - I like it a lot.

FreeRIDE

A nice IDE written especially for Ruby in Ruby. Still in development but quite usable. http://freeride.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl

Editors

CrimsonEditor

Crimson Editor is a professional source editor for Windows. This program is not only fast in loading time, but also small in size (so small that it can be copied in one floppy disk). It handles remote editing and multiple language formats and syntaxen. It can be found at http://www.crimsoneditor.com/

TextPad

TextPad? is a powerful, general purpose editor for plain text files. Easy to use, with all the features a power user requires. Not a bad editor. Understands mac, unix, dos and windows textfiles. http://www.textpad.com/

SciTE

A free source code editor for Win32 and X. Very nice set of features. http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html

Notepad++

A free notepad replacement/source code editor for Win32. GPL'ed. Includes syntax highlighting for many common languages as well as other features and supports plugins, themes. http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm