CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++cgccoperating-systemmingw
Mohammad Desouky
Mohammad Desouky

Reputation: 764

MinGW GCC wildcard to compile all files (Windows)

I'm using MinGW GCC compiler on windows, I need to compile all c files in a folder!

I've tried 

gcc  *.c -o  Output {folder Path}

I got this error 

gcc: error: *.c: Invalid argument 
gcc: fatal error: no input files

then the compilation terminated.

the used version of GCC is 4.7.1

Upvotes: 3

Views: 2648

Answers (3)

Yuyu378
Yuyu378

Reputation: 11

You can use this task in your tesks.json. It will automatically run make command in Command Prompt when you press Run C/C++ File bottom in vscode.

"tasks": [
    {
        "type": "cppbuild",
        "label": "C/C++: make.exe build active file",
        "command": "C:\\Windows\\System32\\cmd.exe",
        "args": [
            "/c",
            "chcp",
            "65001>nul",
            "&&",
            "cd",
            "${workspaceFolder}",
            "&&",
            "make"
        ],
        "group": {
            "kind": "build",
            "isDefault": true
        }
    }
]

To use this task, simply add makefile to the project workspace folder. If the file structure of the workspace is as follows,

C:.
│   makefile
│
├───.vscode
│       launch.json
│       tasks.json
│
├───build
│       test.exe
│
├───include
│       common.h
│       ...
│
├───src
│       common.c
│       ...
│
└───test
        test.c

then makefile will look like this.

# C version lable
CVERLBL = -std=c17
# warning label
WARNLBL = -Wall -Wextra
# optimization label
OPTILBL = -O3
# diagnostics messages formatting label
DXMFLBL = -fdiagnostics-color=always
# all labels in one line
LABELS  = $(DXMFLBL) $(CVERLBL) $(WARNLBL) $(OPTILBL)
# source files
SOURCES = $(wildcard src/*.c)
# source files for test
TESTSRC = $(wildcard test/*.c)
# include directory
INCDIR  = include
# output file location
OUTPUT  = build/test.exe

all:
    gcc $(LABELS) -g $(SOURCES) $(TESTSRC) -I $(INCDIR) -o $(OUTPUT)

Here is the output of the build.

Starting build...
cmd /c chcp 65001>nul && C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c chcp 65001>nul && cd C:\Users\usr\test_project && make
gcc -fdiagnostics-color=always -std=c17 -Wall -Wextra -O3 -g src/common.c test/test.c -I include -o build/test.exe

Be sure you have make.exe (or mingw32-make.exe) in your environment path.

Upvotes: 1

Martin Sawicki
Martin Sawicki

Reputation: 31

I'm doing basically the same thing (i.e. use MinGW GCC on Windows with C files). I use the -g option for each directory whose .c/.h files I want included in the compilation.

For example, if I want to compile everything in the myFolder directory, this works for me:

gcc -g c:\myFolder\*.c -o foo.exe

Note you can use the -g option multiple times on the commandline to include multiple directories. For example, I organize my .c/.h files into various subfolders inside myFolder. So to tell gcc about mySubdir that is inside myFolder, this is what I do:

gcc -g c:\myFolder\*.c -g c:\myFolder\mySubdir\*.c -o foo.exe

Note that for any .h files that I put in such sub directories that I need to reference from C files in the parent dir, I have to use the relative path in #include.

For example, to reference foo.h, which lives inside myFolder/subDir, from a C file that lives in myFolder, I do:

#include "mySubdir/foo.h"

And that's basically it.

Now, for the sake of completeness, if you happen to use VSCode as I am for my C work (which is not necessarily optimal, but ok'ish), then you can tweak this setting in the .vscode/tasks.json, specifying each -g option separately, for example:

            "command": "C:\\msys64\\mingw64\\bin\\gcc.exe",
            "args": [
                "-g",
                "${fileDirname}/*.c",
                "-g",
                "${fileDirname}/mySubdir/*.c",
                "-o",
                "${fileDirname}\\${fileBasenameNoExtension}.exe"
            ],

(my GCC version is 10.3.0)

Upvotes: 2

nivpeled
nivpeled

Reputation: 1838

gcc does not accept a wildcard (*.c) as input file.

You may write a script (batch@windows or .sh @Linux/Unix) which finds all source files and compile them one by one.

but you SHOULD use a makefile or CMAKE to organize your sources and their buildsystem. please read here

Upvotes: 7

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