Bitcoin Forum

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

http://www.mingw.org/

should this be good enough to compile the code for an altcoin based on litecoin?

Are you retarded? Both are stable and well supported. And OP, most compilers ARE free. And you can't really compile Bitcoin with anything other than GCC(GNU Compiler Collection). And compiling Bitcoin under Windows is very hard, I and only a few other people have only succeeded.

This http://kat.ph/microsoft-visual-studio-ultimate-2012-rtm-volume-english-iso-wzt-t6588035.html (http://kat.ph/microsoft-visual-studio-ultimate-2012-rtm-volume-english-iso-wzt-t6588035.html) then this http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35515 (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35515).

You cannot compile Bitcoin with MSVC, not yet at least. I don't think anyone has tried, but I sure as hell don't think OP can do it.

Indeed you will have your work cut out for you trying to get Bitcoin to work with MSVC although it certainly should not be impossible as all the libraries that Bitcoin uses are available for MSVC but usage of specialised build tools will probably be the thing that makes things hardest.

Do you know he is trying to compile Bitcoin? I see a request for a free Windows C++ Compiler.

Ah, missed that. Thx

No problem. I do all my coding in Linux, and mostly in python, so I can't really help with suggestions, though.

If he's compiling a client then he will be stuck using minimalist GNU for windows. Python is a better choice but like they say, "go for what you know."

This two are currently very good opensource projects.

1. http://sourceforge.net/projects/orwelldevcpp/

2. http://www.codeblocks.org/

I wouldn't recommend those. Using the latest MinGW is best, but if he wants to compile the Qt version of a client, he will need to either use MinGW 4.4 OR compile Qt from source, like I did, because in GCC 4.7+ there were C and C++ ABI changes.

Forgive my ignorance, I'm just trying to learn, but what do you mean compile from source.

I have taken C++ classes long ago but I never did use any windows libraries it was all very basic being compiled using Borland on a unix server if I remember correctly. Just trying to be familiar with what it takes to compile bitcoin/litecoin software after I tinker with the code.

Currently Bitcoin only supports being built with MinGW, for the console version you will need OpenSSL,BDB and Boost and optionally miniupnpc, all of those need to be compiled with the same compiler. Only then can you compile Bitcoin.

http://www.codeblocks.org/ ? It also does various other languages like OpenGL, Ogre etc.

CodeBlocks is an IDE. It uses MinGW as a compiler.

Ah, I'm a noob at programming :P that's what I use to mess around with code though.