toolchain.html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
   <title>Downloads</title>
   <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
   <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge,chrome=1">
   <meta http-equiv="cache-control" content="max-age=0" />
   <meta http-equiv="cache-control" content="no-cache" />
   <meta http-equiv="expires" content="0" />
   <meta http-equiv="expires" content="Tue, 01 Jan 1980 1:00:00 GMT" />
   <meta http-equiv="pragma" content="no-cache" />
   <!-- <link rel="icon" href="/img/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" /> -->
   <!-- <link href="./img/styles.css" rel="stylesheet"> -->
   <!-- <script src="./img/jquery-3.6.1.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> -->
   <!-- *    { margin:0; border:0; padding:0; } -->
   <style>
body {
   width:100%;
   height:100%;
   color:white; 
   background-color:rgb(10,10,10);     
   font-family:monospace;
   font-size:16px;
   
   //background:url(./solar.jpg);
   //background-repeat: no-repeat;
   //background-size: cover;
   //background-size: 100%;
}

/* Reihenfolge wichig! <L>o<V>e <F>or <H><A>te 
a:link { color:rgb(255,128,33); text-decoration:none; }
a:visited { color:rgb(235,186,33); text-decoration:none; }
a:focus { color:rgb(255,128,33); text-decoration:none; }
a:hover { color:rgb(255,200,133); text-decoration:underline; }
a:active { color:rgb(200,88,33); text-decoration:none; }
*/

footer
{
   background-color:#202020;
   color:white; 
   position:fixed; 
   bottom:0px; 
   left:0px; 
   width:100%; 
   height:32px; 
   line-height:32px;
   z-index:3;
}
 
   </style>
   
</head>

<body>

   <h1>Benni's GNU/Linux C/C++ Toolchain for Windows64:</h1>
   
   <p>This toolchain brings the bright Linux64 C/C++ development world to Windows64.
   <br>U will never need a Microsoft IDE or Microsoft compiler to build fully
        functional and high performance Windows apps.
   <br>All is done using free available and platform independent tools:
   <br>CMake, MinGW compiler, git4windows and NASM assembler.
   <br>Any multimedia app and library ( e.g. Steinberg VST Audio Plugins )
   <br>is possible using only (mostly) free software</p>
   
   <h1>Advantages of my Toolchain:</h1>
   <ul>
      <li><b><i>DAU safe, easy to read, easy to understand and to contribute to.</i></b></li>
      <br>
      <li><b><i>Colored console messages (e.g. errors are red). Surprises Visual Studio users everytime, even graphics programmers.</i></b></li>
      <br>
      <li><b><i>A terminal with history ( remembers last used commands ) and auto-completion.</i></b></li>
      <br>
      <li><b><i>Uses C++17 standard as default ( has std::filesystem, smart pointers, make_unique<>, etc.. )</i></b></li>
      <br>
      <li><b><i>Only 3 programs have to be installed on Windows64 (QtSDK, CMake, git4windows)</i></b></li>
      <br>
      <ol>
         <li>QtSDK</li>
         <ul>
            <li>The QtSDK is a real life saver and the most important program package in the last 20yrs</li>
            <li>brings QtCreator, the IDE i daily use since 2016 (Visual Studio replacement).</li>
            <li>brings MinGW64 GNU C/C++ compiler suite, atleast version 7.3.1 x64</li>
            <ul>
               <li>contains gcc.exe (C compiler)</li>
               <li>contains g++.exe (C++ compiler)
               <li>contains other compilers like fortran, a GNU assembler, etc...</li>
               <li>contains gdb.exe (Debugger)</li>
               <li>contains windres.exe (RC resource compiler, so u can develop win32 dialogs and embed window icons)</li>
               <li>contains mingw32-make.exe (make replacement)</li>
               <ul>
                  <li>I dont use MSYS anymore.</li>
                  <li>I dont use CYGWIN.</li>
                  <li>I dont use MSYS2, but git4windows probably does itself.</li>
               </ul>                 
            </ul>    
            <li>brings precompiled dlls for graphical user interface development ( aka QtCore, QtWidgets, etc... ).</li>
         </ul>         
         <br>              
         <li>CMake, atleast version 3.14</li>
         <ul>
            <li>All libraries, applications and assembler inside the Benni toolchain are built with custom CMake recipes.</li>
         </ul>         
         <br>
         <li>Git4Windows ( my daily used ANSI colored terminal + git )</li>
         <ul>
            <li>This program also brings /etc/bash.rc to customize your terminal promt.</li>
         </ul>
      </ol>
      <br>
      <li><b><i>You can develop any multimedia program (audio,video,3D and network) on Win64 using free GNU/Linux tools</i></b></li>    
      <br>
      <li><b><i>Includes NASM.exe assembler by source</i></b></li>    
      <br>
      <ul>
         <li>Used to build high performance audio and video codec libs (e.g. x264, x265 )</li>
         <li>I want to be able to build FFMPEG (libAV) with my toolchain on Win64, but FFMPEG itself uses 100+ other (complicated and high perf) libs.</li>
      </ul>     
      <br>
      <li><b><i>99% of libraries are included by source code (e.g. jpeg8d, png, zlib, boost, CGAL, vst2sdk).</i></b></li>         
      <br>
      <ul>
         <li>No incompatible libs ( due to different compile and link options )</li>
         <li>Full control, easier debugging/profiling and custom UnitTesting.</li>
         <li>Bug fixing without having to rely on the vendor to update precompiled libs</li>
         <li>Increased security ( your custom changes lead to different libs, making fix address attacks unlikely )</li>
         <li>Minimal project size, text is compressed much better than dlls.</li>
         <li>High portability.</li>
         <li>Less debugging due to less differences of runtimes.</li>
      </ul>  
      <br>      
      <li><b><i>1% of libraries that are NOT included by source code.</i></b></li>         
      <br>
      <ul>
         <li>FFMPEG is included by precompiled shared libs (still, to be changed).</li>
         <li>wxWidgets is included by precompiled shared libs (still, to be changed).</li>
         <li>libFMOD is included by precompiled shared libs, because its a proprietary, closed source lib.</li>
         <li>QtWidgets is included by precompiled shared libs (static linking is forbidden without license, proprietary libs).</li>
      </ul>
      <br>
      <li><b><i>I dont use Microsoft Visual Studio to develop C/C++ programs for Windows.</i></b></li>
      <br>
      <ul>
         <li>Developer does not waste time with multiple runtimes (MT,MTd,MD,MDd)</li>
         <li>This alone increases your productivity by 100%</li>
         <li>Developer has a better terminal (with colors), not the worst-case cmd.exe</li>
         <li>Developer uses same codebase and tools for Linux and Windows</li>
         <li>The VS dialog to add libraries is the same nightmare since 1998.</li>
      </ul>
      <br>
      <li><b><i>I dont use configure scripts</i></b></li>
      <br>
      <ul>
         <li>Configure scripts are slow and single threaded, which would increase build times.</li>
         <li>My toolchain is 100% of time at 100% CPU usage, meaning minimal build time.</li>
         <li>Time is money.</li>
      </ul>
      <br>      
      <li><b><i>I use CMake as project files</i></b></li>
      <br>
      <ul>
         <li>Platform independent tool for Win,Linux,MacOS</li>
         <li>Adding your custom libs and apps is just a matter of copying and adapting a preset.</li>
         <li>My minimal apps and various libs gives you a preset for any existing lib and project type.</li>
         <li>QtCreator (my IDE) can open CMake projects</li>
         <li>VisualCode can open CMake projects</li>
         <li>CMake files are programs themselfs</li>
         <li>CMake is much easier than makefiles</li>
         <li>I only use a small subset of CMake commands to make it easy and reliable.</li>
         <li>VS project-files are not programmable.</li>
         <li>Qt project-files are not programmable.</li>
         <li>Eclipse project-files are not programmable.</li>
         <li>Codeblocks project-files are not programmable.</li>
      </ul>           
      <br>
   </ul>
   <h1>Disadvantages of my Toolchain:</h1>
   <ul>
      <li>I dont invest much of my finite lifetime in Apple closed systems (MacOS, iOS). </li>
      <li>I dont invest much of my finite lifetime in Google closed systems (Android).</li>
      <li>No MFC, ATL since its M$ only. But you have win32Api and windres RC resource compiler</li>
      <li>A small learning curve</li>
   </ul>   
   
<div>
   <table width="90%">
   <tr><td><h1>Benni's additional daily used tools</h1></td></tr>
   <tr><td><h3 align="center"><u>7zip</u></h3></td></tr>
   <tr><td>
      The best file compressor/decompressor for me.<br>
      I dont use winrar or the like<br>
      My programs ofcourse still use zip, bzip2, because much depend on them.
   </td></tr>
   <tr><td>
      But you wont be able to test any of my programs without 7zip since they are all compressed that way.
   </td></tr>
   <tr><td><h3 align="center"><u>Notepad++</u></h3></td></tr>
   <tr><td>
      The old notepad.exe is the next ugly program that never got better at anything.<br>
      Replacing it is a must for developer.<br>
      Notepad++ can syntax highlighting and can convert between encoding like UTF-8 with or w/o BOM<br>
      Could use some plugins to better understand shaders (glsl).<br>
   </td></tr>  
      <tr><td><h3 align="center"><u>IrfanView</u></h3></td></tr>
   <tr><td>
      Must have for graphics programmers. Best and fastest image viewer, easy to say
      because the competition is just really bad.
      Shows hex colors of pixels on mouseclick, can resize and rotate images. 
      Does handle transparency well, but not perfect. 
      Has Atleast 100x faster startup than gimp or such monsters.
      Can view many formats, not all. Can export many formats, not all ( e.g. .xpm missing )
      Can decompose gif animations into its frames. Views .ico files good enough.
      Has many filters and counts unique colors.
   </td></tr> 
   <tr><td><h3 align="center"><u>ConEmu</u></h3></td></tr>
   <tr><td>
      Another ANSI terminal emulator on Windows. It works but i simply use the terminal in Git4Windows.</br>
   </td></tr>      
   <tr><td><h3 align="center"><u>ASIO4ALL free audio driver</u></h3></td></tr>
   <tr><td>
      A must have for audio developers and producers with generic soundcards.
      I install this driver on any of my Windows machines, to develop realtime audio with RtAudio mostly.
      I currently dont have any special ASIO hardware.<br> 
      I used to have more professional Audio hardware when i was developing at AlcaTech GmbH in Dresden</br>
   </td></tr>      
   <tr><td><h3 align="center"><u>OpenAL audio driver</u></h3></td></tr>
   <tr><td>
      Some apps and libraries depend on it, e.g. libSFML.
      Is yet another audio driver needed for some apps, its kinda easy to program with but latencies are not 
      really low, because it uses DSound itself asfar as i understand with almost 120ms latencies. 
      Enough for playing music in games, but not low enough for producing music.<br> 
   </td></tr>
   <tr><td><h3 align="center"><u>VLC</u></h3></td></tr>
   <tr><td>
      Can play almost any video, audio and image file. Based on FFMPEG (libAVCodec) and QtSDK.
      My daily video/DVD viewer and music player. Didnt test Blue-Ray since a long time.
   </td></tr>
   <tr><td><h3 align="center"><u>Handbrake</u></h3></td></tr>
   <tr><td>
      Ok video converter. Sadly does not extract audio only.
   </td></tr>
   <tr><td><h3 align="center"><u>ClipGrab</u></h3></td></tr>
   <tr><td>
      Download high resolution videos from Youtube. My browser plugins stops at 720p. Anything higher
      is grabbed using this tool. Based on yt-download.
   </td></tr>
   <tr><td><h3 align="center"><u>Virtual-TI / ti-emu</u></h3></td></tr>
   <tr><td>
      My desktop calculator app. You need to own a Texas Instrument Ti89 or higher to be able to use it.
      Since u need a ROM downloaded from the calculator. Sharing is forbidden.
      The investment of 150€ (2003) was worth it and i never did regret it for one second.
      I dont advertise for CASIO calculators since i dont like them ( my opinion was formed 2003 ).
   </td></tr>
   </table>
</div>
   

</body>
</html>