visual c++ - Invoking cl.exe (MSVC compiler) in Cygwin shell

Question

I'm heavily using Cygwin (with PuTTY shell). But, it's quite tricky to invoke cl.exe (that is, the Visual C++ compiler toolchain) in the Cygwin Bash shell. Running vcvars*.bat in the Bash shell doesn't work obviously. I tried to migrate VC++'s environment variables to Cygwin, but it's not that easy.

How do I run the VC++ compiler in Cygwin's Bash shell?

Answer 1

I usually solve this by adding

call "%VS80COMNTOOLS%vsvars32.bat" >NUL:

to c:/cygwin/cygwin.bat. Note that the VS80COMNTOOLS variable is extremely useful, since it gives you a foolproof (hm) way of locating vsvars32.bat.

Another approach is this, which allows you to easily switch between different Studio versions:

function run_with_bat()
{
    batfile=$1; shift
    tmpfile="$TMP/tmp$$.bat"
    echo "@echo off" > $tmpfile
    echo "call "%$batfile%vsvars32.bat" >NUL:" >> $tmpfile
    echo "bash -c "%*"" >> $tmpfile
    cmd /c `cygpath -m "$tmpfile"` "$@"
    status=$?
    rm -f $tmpfile
    return $status
}

function run_vs9()
{
    run_with_bat VS90COMNTOOLS "$@"
}

function run_vs8()
{
    run_with_bat VS80COMNTOOLS "$@"
}

You can now do:

$ run_vs8 cl
Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 14.00.50727.762 for 80x86
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved. 

usage: cl [ option... ] filename... [ /link linkoption... ]
$ run_vs9 cl
Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 15.00.21022.08 for 80x86
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

usage: cl [ option... ] filename... [ /link linkoption... ]

Note the compiler version.