GDC for dummies

[Bill Baxter]

bearophile wrote:
> Time again to ask 'dumb' questions (maybe it's just a problem of searching paths).
> 
> So far I have failed in the install of GDC (despite already having MinGW correctly working, I use it quite often), so I have followed the instructions.
> 
> This page:
> http://gdcwin.sourceforge.net/
> 
> Says:
> "You need to have regular Minimalist GNU for Windows already installed,"
> 
> So I have used this online installer (to install it again ;-) ):
> http://surfnet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/mingw/MinGW-5.1.3.exe
> I have chosen to download the make and the C++ compiler.
> 
> Even if it's an ugly path, to avoid possible (silly) problems I have accepted its suggested path:
> C:\MinGW
> 
> (I have seen that it adds nothing to the path variable, that's probably wrong for such installer).
> 
> Then I have installed this:
> http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/gdcwin/gdc-0.24-gcc-3.4.5.exe
> 
> Installed in:
> C:\languages\D\GDC
> 
> Again I can't see path variable updated, nor any bat file that updates it on the fly for a specific shell. So what ambient variables do I have to set, and what paths I do have to add to the 'path' variable to make gdc work? I can't see docs or helps that list them.
> 
> (I have no Perl installed yet, I usually use Python because it's better for most things, but I may end installing ActivePerl too if it's useful).
> 
> I have tried to add most things to the path:
> 
> PATH=C:\MinGW;C:\MinGW\bin;C:\MinGW\lib;C:\languages\D\GDC;C:\languages\D\GDC\lib;C:\languages\D\GDC\bin;C:\WINNT;C:\MinGW\lib\gcc\mingw32\3.4.5;
> 
> Then I have tried to compile a tiny D Fibonacci program:
> gdc fib.d -o fib
> 
> But it can't find this:
> ld: crtbegin.o: No such file: No such file or directory
> 
> Note that crtbegin.o is currently here, in the path:
> C:\MinGW\lib\gcc\mingw32\3.4.5
> 
> Detailed suggestions are very welcome. If you need more info about the system I can give it too.
> 
> Bye,
> bearophile

I dunno but I would think you'd put lib dirs in a LIB or LIBPATH 
variable, rather than PATH.  Still I'm surprised that it's not finding 
lib files by default.  The mingw installs I've used seem to have the lib 
path hard-coded into them somehow so that they don't work unless they're
  in C:\MinGW.  So installing it there is probably the right thing to do.

I've never made a serious effort to get MinGW GDC working, though.

--bb