Please forgive me if this is a frequently asked question. A search of google
and this site has not been able to turn up the relevent info.

I'm brand new to MingW (though not to C/C++ programming)--so new I have to
run MingW in a DOS box (what? A Windows 32 compiler that runs, not in
Windows, but DOS? Whoa....).

So one question I have is, anyone know of a MingW or similar GNU-compatible
C++ compiler that uses the Windows GUI instead of the DOS command line?
I've heard of DEV++ and Gnuwin32 but am not sure if either are what I'm
looking for.

That's actually a side question. I have been attempting to compile the pov
v. 3.6 source code with the version 3.4.2 MingW compiler. I, naturally, am
having problems figuring it all out.

For example, what is an "error 1"? None of the MingW documentation I've
looked at gives me even a hint what that means.

I did find the main makefile.gcc under the windowsmakefiles directory. I got
that "config.h" error due to my version of MingW being different from the
one the makefile is meant for. I am compiling the console version of povray
(for now), so I need to modify the one in the sourcewindowsconsole
directory.

First problem I haven't figured out; what number to put in the
__GNUC_MINOR__
line. I don't know how to determine what number to put here. How do I get
the version number, and what is "GNUC"? It's not gcc or gpp, so it's not
the c compiler is it?

For now I've simply commented that out and it seems to compile ok until I
get to the POVMSEND.CPP file, where I get a bunch of errors starting at
line 892 of POVMSEND.CPP where I get the message "error: expected ')'
before "COMPILOR_MINOR_VER", and other errors cascade from there. I'm going
to guess it's because I commented out that ___GNUC_MINOR__ section in the
makefile.

So how do I fix it? I'm not supposed to actually modify POVMSEND.CPP itself,
right? Not if I'm trying to compile standard POV.

How do I get this thing to compile? :)

Best info I found until now was on this page:
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sjoh2038/coding/compile_povray.html
Which is about compiling povray v. 3.5 (not 3.6). I followed the
instructions on that page, and was able to compile most of the libraries
(zlib, libPNG, etc.) without having to make any modifications (no idea yet
how well the compiled code works), but was not able to get libtiff to
compile. There was no provided makefile.gcc file and I don't know how to
create a working one. Any help?

Or do I even need to worry about that as the main povray makefile.gcc seems
to include compiling libtiff? Or does it?

Yes I did remember to customize DISTRIBUTION_MESSAGE in the optout.h file.
:)

So what's the next step to compiling this?

Oh, incidentally, I'm planning to customize the code to add some new
features I've been wanting, which is why just the precompiled binaries
won't do. :)

Thanks to all in advance and hope I wasn't too tedious...I never expected
compiling povray to be *this* difficult! (Well it's hard for a windows32
c++ newbie like me).

I do think I got *most* of the way ok...

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