HOW TO INSTALL SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TOOLS

FOR C/C++ PROGRAMMING

Please follow one of the below installation instructions depending on the operating system
(Windows/macOS/Linux/) that you use.

Windows

1. Install VS Code
• Download the VS Code installer for Windows
• Double-click at the downloaded file to run the installer

2. Install the C/C++ extension for VS Code

• Open VS Code
• Click at the Extensions icon in the Activity Bar on the left side of VS Code
• Type "C/C++" in the Search box to search for the C/C++ extension
• Click at the Install button of the extension

3. Install gcc, g++ and C/C++ standard libraries

a. Go to this link: MinGW-w64. Download x86_64-posix-seh with latest version.

 - After you download the file x86_64-8.1.0-release-posix-seh-rt_v6-rev0.7z, right
click on it and select “Extract Here” with Winrar or 7-Zip tool to extract it. You will
get the extracted folder as below:

- Now, open the extracted folder, you will see a folder namely mingw64 inside. Select
and copy that folder to your C drive. You will see it as below.

b. Browse to bin folder then copy its path. With instructions above, the path will
be “C:\mingw64\bin” (it is fine if you copy it in another place and have
different path but must have no space characters in the path).
c. Add the above path to the Windows PATH environment variable so that gcc can
run without the full path in Windows Terminal (PowerShell and Command Prompt):
o In search bar, search for “variables” and select “Edit the system environment
variables”.

o Select “Environment Variables”

o Under System variables area, select Path > Edit. In the Edit environment variable
window, press New and input path to the bin directory of our installed GCC tool. After
that, press OK in all windows to complete PATH setting.

d. Test the gcc tool to make sure that it is installed properly:

Type powershell in Search bar to open PowerShell
Type “gcc --version”. If it is installed correctly, you should see the result as below:
4. Install GNU Make tool
a. Go to the link http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/make.htm
Select “Complete package, except sources” Setup to download and install it.
b. Similary, add path of its bin directory (by default is C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32\bin) to
system PATH environment variable.

and check again with command “make --version”.

5. Get familiar with VS Code

a. Close and re-open VS Code if it is opening. Click on File > Add Folder to Workspace. Browse to/
create a folder where you want to save all of your programs (e.g. D:\MyCodingSpace), and select it.
b. Create a new file namelly hello.c with example program as below
 Copy the following code and paste it into your hello.c file:
#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
int num;
printf("Enter an integer: ");
scanf("%d", &num);
printf("Got number = %d", num);
return 0;
}

c. Click on File > Auto Save to turn on Auto Save feature for all files (very helpful feature !).

d. Click on Teminal > New Terminal to open Windows’ Powershell terminal.

e. In the terminal window, type “gcc hello.c” to compile the hello.c file. By default it will generate
a.exe in Windows as a result (can type “ls” to see all files). Then, type “./a.exe” to run the
program. It should work properly as below:

6. Install and use Code Runner extension for “click to compile and run” feature.
• Click at the Extensions icon in the Activity Bar on the left side of VS Code
Type "Code Runner" in the Search box to search for it, and click at the Install button of
the extension.
• Go to File > Preferences > Setting. Search for Code Runner. Scroll down to find and tick on
option “Code-runner: Run In Terminal” (will make the program to run in terminal when we hit
Run button).

• Now, you can hit the RUN button to compile and run your program.
Mac OS
1. Install VS Code
• Download the VSCode to a directory
• Open Finder and navigate to that directory
• Double-click at the zip file to unzip it
• Drag the Visual Studio Code.app to the Applications directory to make it
available in Launchpad

Note: If you use macOS Catalina (macOS 10.15), you may see a message "Visual Studio Code
can't be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software". This is because
Visual Studio Code is not currently notarized but it will run just fine on macOS Catalina. To work
around the notarization check, open Launchpad > System Preferences
> Security & Privacy > General and choose Open Anyway.

2. Install the C/C++ extension for VS Code

• Open VS Code
• Click at the Extensions icon in the Activity Bar on the left side of VS Code
• Type "C/C++" in the Search box to search for the C/C++ extension
• Click at the Install button of the extension

3. Install gcc, g++ and C/C++ standard libraries

a. Install homebrew
- Go to https://brew.sh/ and copy the installation script

- Open the terminal, paste the script and run it

b. Install gcc tool from homebrew:
- Run command “brew install gcc”

- Check install success by brew info gcc

If the installation FAIL, type following commands:

rm -rf /usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Taps/homebrew/homebrew-core
brew tap homebrew/core
- As above, the gcc version 11 has been installed. Check again by command gcc-11 –version.

Note: You may get another version depending on the current time of installation. For example, if
you got version 12, type gcc-12 –version.

c. Create a symbolic link (shortcut) file for gcc.

On Mac OS, the default compiler is clang. Thus, to use gcc, we need to create a symbolic link namely
gcc which links to our actual gcc-11 file (so that we can just type gcc to use our actual gcc version 11
tool)

- Check where the gcc-11 is installed

which gcc-11

You may get /usr/local/bin/gcc-11 as the result, then it is in /usr/local/bin/ (some people may get
another location, e.g. /opt/local/bin/gcc-11).

- cd to the location that you get above and list out content by flowing commands.
You should see gcc-11 file there:
cd /usr/local/bin
ls
Note: in “ls” and “ln” commands, l is L letter in lower-case (not i letter).
 - Create a symbolic link file namely gcc which links to our actual gcc-11 file as below
ln -s gcc-11 gcc

- Check again with “ls” command. You should see both files gcc (symbolic link) and actual gcc-11
file.
ls

d. Now, close and reopen the terminal, type “gcc –version” to check that whether we have
successfully have configured it correctly or not. You should see it as Homebrew GCC (not
clang) as below:
4. Install GNU Make tool
a. Check that you already have the make tool or not
make --version

b. If you do not have it, install it through command

brew install make

5. Check and Get familiar with VS Code

a. Create a new folder to store your codes, e.g. MyCodingSpace on your Desktop.
b. Open VS Code. Click on File > Add Folder to Workspace. Browse to that folder and select it.
c. Create a new file namelly hello.c with example program as below

Copy the following code and paste it into your hello.c file:
#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
int num;
printf("Enter an integer: ");
scanf("%d", &num);
printf("Got number = %d", num);
return 0;
}

d. Click on File > Auto Save to turn on Auto Save feature for all files (very helpful feature !).

e. Click on Teminal > New Terminal to open Terminal.

f. In the terminal window, type “gcc hello.c” to compile the hello.c file. By default it will generate
a.out file as a result (can type “ls” to see all files). Then, type “./a.out” to run the program.
6. Install and use Code Runner extension for “click to compile and run” feature.
a. Click at the Extensions icon in the Activity Bar on the left side of VS Code
Type "Code Runner" in the Search box to search for it, and click at the Install button of
the extension.

b. Go to Code > Preferences > Setting. Search for Code Runner. Scroll down to find and tick on
option “Code-runner: Run In Terminal” (will make the program to run in terminal when we hit
Run button).

c. Now, you can hit the RUN button to compile and run your program.
Linux (Ubuntu/Debian/Mint)
Similarly for Linux:

1. Install VS Code
Download the deb file to a directory
Open Terminal then navigate to that directory
$ sudo apt install ./<file>.deb

Note: <file>.deb must be replaced by the exact name of the downloaded deb file.

2. Install the C/C++ extension for VS Code

Open VS Code
Click at the Extensions icon in the Activity Bar on the left side of VS Code
Type "C/C++" in the Search box to search for the C/C++ extension
Click at the Install button of the extension

3. Install gcc, g++ and C/C++ standard libraries using Terminal

$ sudo apt install gcc g++
$ sudo apt install build-essential