Compiling and Porting Serial Applications for Windows

There are three basic ways to build an executable to run on the Cornell Theory Center compute nodes running Windows:

1. Command line compilation - If the application is simple enough to fit into one or two source files and doesn't require many special libraries or include files, you may compile and link it from the command line.
2. Integrated Development Environment (IDE) - Microsoft Visual Studio is good for simple applications, as well as more complex ones. It can handle all compiler and linker options, include files, libraries (both static and dynamic) and dependencies. It also has a built-in debugger and source code browser. VTune, which can be integrated with Microsoft Visual Studio can provide profiling capability.
3. Makefiles - for applications that are being ported from a command-line interface such as Unix, or applications where many similar executables or libraries are produced, the makefile approach is sometimes more efficient. To gain the advantage of the Microsoft debugger, a makefile can be used inside Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.