bleh g++, windows, Luser* ptr = me

Long story short, I'm an idiot who happens to know C and C++.  What I mean is I don't know anything about the shit torrent of files and Linux related things needed to do anything useful.  Can anyone offer some help on how to do any of these tasks:

1) Say I have MinGW and gcc setup (on XP).  How do I update gcc with the latest release?  e.g. at http://www.club.cc.cmu.edu/pub/gnu/gcc/gcc-4.1.1/ for g++ components I found one .tar.bz2.sig file and one .tar.bz2 file (and zero instructions from the GNU site which directed me there). 

2) How do you actually setup MinGW & g++, from scratch?  I'm reasonably sure I have all the required files (from http://www.mingw.org/download.shtml), but when I unzip them all into a folder and use g++ I get this error message anytime I try to compile:

gcc: installation problem, cannot exec `as'

3) Where the hell was I supposed to find this information in the first place? 

The online manuals are a joke when you are a new user looking for this type of stuff.  I just got started using minGW and I literally spent days getting NOWHERE doing it myself (see #2, #3).  The only progress I made is finding a completely random guy's personal website (namely http://nuwen.net/mingw.html) who hosts a zipped preinstalled version of minGW with g++.  So I have a working version for now, but I really need to understand the newbie things.

'Free' as in 'no Free Lunch' I guess.

1) Say I have MinGW and gcc setup (on XP).

Well, the problem is here, you should install FreeBSD instead so you won't have all these problems in the future. Here is the link, it's fast and easy: http://www.FreeBSD.org/
2) How do you actually setup MinGW & g++

See the answer above, everything will be clear for you after.
3) Where the hell was I supposed to find this information in the first place?

On Google, moron. It's a search engine, do you speak it?
'Free' as in 'no Free Lunch' I guess.

No, it's Free as in "FreeBSD", remember.

I'm trying to get help with minGW.  If I ever learn the quirks of Unix-like OSes I'll consider installing FreeBSD.  minGW is largely irrelevant for #1 and #3 anyways.

I do speak google, but Linux doesn't speak usability.  After 3 days I stopped searching for support that maybe isn't even there.  The 'guides' only tell you what files you need,  but not what to do or what to do when things don't work.

>>1

When I need something like that on a windows box, I investigate whether cygwin is the proper tool to employ. It's come through for me whenever I need soem unix magic in windows.

thread needs moar owl

>>5
o rly?

Cygwin uses a GNU dll.

YOU ARE NOW THINKING MANUALLY

<-- check em dubz

13 Name: Sgt.Kabu呩⣓kimanᅨ战 2012-05-28 22:14

Bringing /prog/ back to its people
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All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy