Installation
macOS
On macOS the C compilers are typically installed as part of the Xcode Command Line Tools. You have two options here.
Xcode Command Line Tools
First we need to make sure that the xcode command line tools are installed:
xcode-select --install
After that you should be able to run the following command to verify the installation:
xcode-select -p
# /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools
Clang
Clang (from the LLVM Project) is the default C, C++, and Objective-C compiler on macOS. It is included with the Xcode Command Line Tools. You can verify that it is installed by running:
clang --version
In my machine I get this after running the previous in my terminal:
Apple clang version 15.0.0 (clang-1500.3.9.4)
Target: arm64-apple-darwin23.0.0
Thread model: posix
InstalledDir: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin
GCC
The other alternative is GCC (GNU Compiler Collection)
which can be installed using a package manager like Homebrew
like this: brew install gcc
To install Homebrew run the following command in your terminal:
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
After the installation completes, you can now install gcc:
brew install gcc
Once installed you can verify the version by running on your terminal:
gcc --version
Linux
GCC
On Linux it depends on the distribution but the most common one is GCC (GNU Compiler Collection). It is the default compiler in most distros. For example, Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, and Arch include GCC in their default repositories or pre-install it with developer tools.
You can install it through your favorite package manager:
#Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt intall gcc
# Fedora:
sudo dnf install gcc
# Arch:
sudo pacman -S gcc
Verify the installation by running the following command:
gcc --version
Clang
An alternative would be Clang (from the LLVM Project). You can also install with a package manager:
# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt intall clang
# Fedora:
sudo dnf install clang
# Arch:
sudo pacman -S clang
Then, verify the installation:
clang --version
Windows
On windows there a many ways to get a C, C++, compatible compiler but they are not typically included by default.
In this guide I will just show you the way that I prefer to do it and mention briefly other alternatives.
Microsoft C/C++ Compiler (MSVC)
This is the standard compiler for C and C++ on Windows. It is not pre-installed so we need to first install it. It is included in the installation of Microsoft Visual Studio.
Option 1: Download and Install Visual Studio Community
Make sure to also select one C/C++ workload in the installation wizard. If you use Visual Studio as your main editor and compiler you are all set.
Option 2: Download and Install the Build Tools for Visual Studio
You will need to select the Desktop development with C++ workload. The installation process will install the right tools for C/C++ development, this includes compiler, likers, assemblers, and other build tools. There will be separate x86 and x64 compilers and tools to build code for x86, x64, ARM and ARM64 targets.
To start using the compiler and linker, we first need to setup the command
line environment. Depending on which is the target of your game, you will find
a .bat program called vcvars[target].bat. For x64, typically found in:
\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\VC\Auxiliary\Build
This batch program will configure your terminal with the correct environment variables. You can alternatively run the general vcvarsall.bat program with the correct arguments to setup your environment. For example:
.\vcvarsall.bat x64
This is will configure the compiler and other tools for x64 build.
After configuring your environment, you can now verify that you have the compiler program available in your terminal:
cl --version
You can read more in detail in this article: Use the Microsoft C++ toolset from the command line
