Native Desktop Window Skeleton with ATL

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 12:50:06 +0000

Building native Windows application with C++ can be done using a variety of techniques, from handrolled win32 to MFC. Some uglier than others. Using some ATL macros, here is the most minimalist implementation I could find, that will get you a native Windows desktop shell up and running.

Here’s a skeleton native Windows desktop application that uses ATL (Abstract Template Library) as a thin wrapper on top of the underlying Windows scaffolding (e.g. the winproc, the message pump and so on). Compared to hand rolling this plumbing yourself, ATL (although its largly macro based) keeps the code lean and mean. I plan to use this as a shell DirectX render target for testing. For buildable VS2012 solution see github.

C++11 with Clang on Windows and MinGW

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 10:44:33 +0000

Installation steps for getting a functional Clang++ build running on Windows 8 and MinGW.

Step 1

Install MinGW. Using mingw-get-inst-20120426.exe go with the pre-packaged repository catalogues, which bundles in GCC 4.6.1 as opposed to 4.7.x, which at the time of writing Clang does not support seemlessly. You will need the C Compiler, C++ Compiler, MSYS Basic System and MinGW Developer Toolkit MinGW packages.

Step 2

Python 2.x. Install the Python Interpreter and Libraries into c:\MinGW\bin.

C++ on Benny Simmonds

Native Desktop Window Skeleton with ATL

C++11 with Clang on Windows and MinGW

Step 1

Step 2