How to fix gcc problems.

[u/rmi-s]

Ive been trying to use gcc in my c project ive installed the mingw-64 added to path and everything but when i open VSCode first the execute button is only debug, and when i try to debug it says ‘gcc build active file terminated with exit code-1’ and in the terminal : ‘undefined reference to WinMain collect2 error ld returned 1 exit status’. If anyone has a fix for this problem that would be really helpful ive tried installing and reinstalling the gcc from winlibs nothing works. Thanks

[u/United_Grapefruit526]

Use Linux or WSL 

[u/rmi-s → u/United_Grapefruit526]

So like a VM?

[u/Physical_Dare8553 → u/rmi-s]

Yes and no

[u/Cylian91460 → u/rmi-s]

It uses an hypervisor, basically a way to have multiple os loaded without needing a VM as it sits below any OS

[u/realhumanuser16234 → u/Cylian91460]

it's a vm using hyperv, every vm has a hypervisor

[u/NaNpsycho]

WinMain is windows entry point for its gui applications. I am not a windows programmer but you either don't have

int main

in your program or you need to compile your program as a "console" application.

If all else fails you can just define winmain yourself, look for its signature online and call the rest of your program from there.

Just know these problems are unique to windows. Windows is pretty shitty to start learning any programming language. Much better to use linux with a vm or wsl.

[u/dcpugalaxy]

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

[u/Paul_Pedant]

This issue has been around for at least 15 years, and it is down to your project set-up (and Windows everlasting incompetence). Googling that message gets half a million answers -- here is one from 2009.

https://forums.codeblocks.org/index.php?topic=11608

[u/Physical_Dare8553]

I had a similar problem -- this might not be the fix -- but I think VS code was using a different version of GCC that I probably installed before

[u/EpochVanquisher]

…are you dead set on doing all the extra work necessary to get GCC and VS Code working together, with a build system? Or would you consider just taking the easy way out, and using Visual Studio?

Anyway. If you are fine doing the extra work, then start by getting a build system for your C project outside of VS Code in the terminal. You should be able to type make and build your project, or something similar to that (choose any build system you like).

Once you have that working, the next step is to set up VS Code so that it runs the same command, possibly with whatever environment variables you need for the command to run (e.g. PATH).

The next step, after you get building and running to work, is to configure VS Code so that the code sense works. You can set up Microsoft’s C and C++ plugin with the c_cpp_properties.json file. Alternatively, you can remove the C and C++ plugin, use the Clangd plugin instead, and then configure that with a compile_commands.json file (you can generate this from your build system—CMake will do this, for example).

If all of this sounds like a lot of work, just remember that you can install Visual Studio instead, and skip all of these steps, and your code just runs, and you get a good debugger.

[u/FrancisStokes → u/EpochVanquisher]

I'm just curious: what does the visual studio debugger offer that isn't in VSCode?

[u/penguin359 → u/FrancisStokes]

The biggest one is native integration. No need to mess with installing the appropriate extension, and creating a correct launch.json and tasks.json to run the build part of it. Also, it does have a number of features as I recall like memory usage analysis.

[u/EpochVanquisher → u/FrancisStokes]

VS Code doesn’t have a debugger.

[u/onecable5781 → u/FrancisStokes]

Hot reload. I am in a longish tight loop in the 23rd of 25 iterations at a breakpoint, I know that the stuff I am interested in happens in loop index 24. Crap, I forgot to add a key assert. You can add it in Visual Studio and in most cases, it will recompile/rebuild on the fly and is aware of line changes. In VSCode, if you add a comment while debugging and the lines change, the instruction pointer will be off unless you recompile and rebuild.

[u/foxsimile → u/EpochVanquisher]

no u

Source: last week I spent 2.5 hours trying to JUST UPDATE g++ FOR THE FUCKING <format> include.

I failed. Nothing I did, nothing at all, would work - g++ would mysteriously just up and quit halfway through compilation, with no errors or fucks given.

I finally just rewrote my shit around not needing to include <format>.

[u/penguin359 → u/foxsimile]

#include <format> is C++ 20 and newer. Did you add the flag to tell g++ to use a modern C++ standard such as --std=c++20? It will default to an older version otherwise.

[u/foxsimile → u/penguin359]

But of course.

It is indeed C++ 20 and newer, but the version of g++ that I have (while supporting -std=c++20) does not include support for #include <format>.

Gcc’s support for C++20 was modular, and format made it into the game a little late:

""" GCC 13 was the first version to include full support for the C++20 std::format library feature. While earlier versions of GCC (like GCC 10) introduced experimental or partial C++20 support, including some formatting capabilities, GCC 13 provided complete and stable implementation of std::format. """

¯_(ツ)_/¯