Run C program written in Linux on Windows

Question

I have C program which I wrote in Linux that runs very well. Now I want to run it on Windows.

How do I easily run it on Windows?

Answer 1

The answers you got so far, focus on installing the GNU operating system on the Windows kernel; but you could also use freeware tools from Microsoft. This solution is probably most attractive if you want to continue to develop on Linux, and only do a little work for porting on Windows:

Microsoft offers a simplified version of their development environment as freeware: Visual Studio Express (download). If your program does only file IO it will probably compile unmodified, because Microsoft supplies the C standard library too.

For GUI I also wholeheartedly recommend the Qt framework. It is very well written and documented; it is now licensed under the LGPL, so you can link it to proprietary applications without any cost. However it is written in C++ so you would need to change the programing language. For integration of QT with Visual Studio Express: I believe it works, but you need to try it out. About five years ago I tested the integration of (proprietary) QT and (professional) Visual Studio for my employer, and it worked perfectly.