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.

Answer 2

I understand that your problem is converting vcvars32.bat into a shell script.

One way around the problem is based on the idea that environment variables are inherited when one process launches another. So you can simply run vcvars32 under cmd and then run bash. This works fine on my machine:

sh-3.2$ 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... ] 

Alternatively, run set before and after invoking vcvars32 under cmd, and then create a shell script to set the environment variables.

Answer 3

Following suggestions in the other answers, I did a diff of my bash "set" results with and without the MSVC variables, and came up with the following script to reproduce them for my installation of Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Express. I've refactored it a bit to put all the installation-dependent pieces at the top, so hopefully this can be of use to others.

# These lines will be installation-dependent.
export VSINSTALLDIR='C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\'
export WindowsSdkDir='C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\'
export FrameworkDir='C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\'
export FrameworkVersion=v4.0.30319
export Framework35Version=v3.5

# The following should be largely installation-independent.
export VCINSTALLDIR="$VSINSTALLDIR"'VC\'
export DevEnvDir="$VSINSTALLDIR"'Common7\IDE\'

export FrameworkDIR32="$FrameworkDir"
export FrameworkVersion32="$FrameworkVersion"

export INCLUDE="${VCINSTALLDIR}INCLUDE;${WindowsSdkDir}include;"
export LIB="${VCINSTALLDIR}LIB;${WindowsSdkDir}lib;"
export LIBPATH="${FrameworkDir}${FrameworkVersion};"
export LIBPATH="${LIBPATH}${FrameworkDir}${Framework35Version};"
export LIBPATH="${LIBPATH}${VCINSTALLDIR}LIB;"

c_VSINSTALLDIR=`cygpath -ua "$VSINSTALLDIR\\\\"`
c_WindowsSdkDir=`cygpath -ua "$WindowsSdkDir\\\\"`
c_FrameworkDir=`cygpath -ua "$FrameworkDir\\\\"`

export PATH="${c_WindowsSdkDir}bin:$PATH"
export PATH="${c_WindowsSdkDir}bin/NETFX 4.0 Tools:$PATH"
export PATH="${c_VSINSTALLDIR}VC/VCPackages:$PATH"
export PATH="${c_FrameworkDir}${Framework35Version}:$PATH"
export PATH="${c_FrameworkDir}${FrameworkVersion}:$PATH"
export PATH="${c_VSINSTALLDIR}Common7/Tools:$PATH"
export PATH="${c_VSINSTALLDIR}VC/BIN:$PATH"
export PATH="${c_VSINSTALLDIR}Common7/IDE/:$PATH"