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RSXNTDJ is an add-on to DJGPP which allows to develop Win32 programs. This is targeted for Win32 (Windows 9X and NT) and Win32s (Windows 3.X + Win32s) platforms (but the development environment will only run on Windows 9X/NT); it supports DJGPP v2.x and includes debugging tools and an IDE, but it needs to be registered (for a small fee) if you want to develop commercial or shareware applications with it.

RSXNTDJ supports Win32 console, GUI, DLLs and bound programs (the latter can be run on DOS under the RSX extender, as well as on Windows). You can download RSXNTDJ from SimTel.

RSXNTDJ was produced with GCC v2.7.2.1 and DJGPP v2.01. If you use it with later versions of GCC and DJGPP, you might need to tweak the installation a bit. People who succeeded in this feat report that they needed to make the following changes:

• Add the directory where the pre-processor (cpp.exe) is kept to the PATH environment variable. (Without this, the resource compiler won't work.)
• Edit DJGPP.ENV to add the directories where the RSXNTDJ libraries are kept to the value of the LIBRARY_PATH variable.
• The URL mentioned in the RSXNTDJ help file for the MS Platform SDK header files is no longer valid. You can find the SDK headers on the Microsoft World Wide Web site. Note that the patches to Windows header files included in the package are outdated by later versions of those headers released by Microsoft. You might need to apply the patches manually if the patch utility fails.
• I'm also told that the stdio.h header supplied with RSXNTDJ defines several inline functions with the extern qualifier, which causes GCC to not compile them into the object file, and triggers undefined references. The solution is to define the extern symbol to an empty string in one of the source files which includes the stdio.h header.

Note that the version of linker ld.exe which comes with RSXNTDJ doesn't print any message if you forget to link in libraries such as libcomct.a and libcomdl.a. Instead, the produced executables will die with SIGSEGV when run. Sometimes, forgetting to #include windows.h also produces a program that crashes at run time. You can use the stock DJGPP version of ld.exe to see the list of the missing functions, and then find out which libraries to add to the link command line (use the nm utility to find out which libraries contain the required external symbols).

If RSXNTDJ doesn't suit your needs, you can use a few other compilers which target Win32 platforms:

Cygnus GNU-Win32 tools

This tool-chain includes native Win32 ports of GCC and of many GNU development tools. It requires you to comply to the GNU License, the GPL, when distributing programs built with these tools. The tools and the programs you build are native Win32 executables (won't run on DOS, Windows 3.X or Win32s platforms) and Posix-compliant, but you need to distribute a 4MB DLL file with all your programs. Also, GNU-Win32 is still in beta phase, and some bugs are still worked on. You can find GNU-Win32 on the Cygnus site, or via FTP.

Mingw32 (Minimal GNU-Win32)

This features native Win32 ports of GCC and EGCS, the experimental version of GCC, but it relies on the Windows C runtime (CRTDLL.DLL, which is standard on Windows 9X and Windows/NT) and doesn't require any additional DLLs like Cygnus ports do; however, you lose the Posix layer. Since it doesn't use any GPL'ed stuff except GCC and its subprograms, the programs produced by Mingw32 are free. For more details, visit the Mingw32 home page.

Lcc-Win32 compiler and tools

This is a Win32 port of a freeware compiler Lcc, not related to GCC. It doesn't currently support C++ programs. The tool-chain includes some additional utilities such as a resource compiler and a resource browser, an IDE, and a Make utility. For more information, visit the Lcc home page and the lcc-win32 home page.

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