Pelles C - Overview http://www.pellesc.de/index.php?

page=overview&lang=en

| Home | Newsletter | Statistics | About |

Copyright © 1999-2018
Pelle Orinius

Menu ..:: Overview

News
Summary of Pelles C:
Overview
Screenshots Pelles C for Windows is a complete development kit for Windows and Pocket PC.
Download It contains among other things an optimizing C compiler, a linker, a resource
compiler, a message compiler, a make utility and install builders for both
Changelog
Windows and Pocket PC.
Wiki
Forum It also contains an integrated development environment (IDE) with project
Sourcecode management, debugger, source code editor and resource editors for dialogs,
menus, string tables, accelerator tables, bitmaps, icons, cursors, animated
Links
cursors, animation videos (AVI's without sound), versions and XP manifests.
Current version:
The compiler is based on LCC (by Chris Fraser and David Hanson), and the
Stable:
8.00 install builder for Windows is based on NSIS. Both are heavily modified.
BETA:
- Features:

Screenshot: Integrated resource editor.

You can find more
screenshots here.
Integrated bitmap, icon and cursor editor.
Integrated animated cursor and video editor.
Integrated hex-dump editor.
Integrated source-level debugger.
Integrated source code editor with Win32 API call tips.
Project management.
Inline assembler with Intel syntax.
Support for custom controls in the dialog editor.
Support for additional project wizards.
Support for Microsoft's exception handling: __try, __except, __finally, __leave.
Support for Microsoft's new import libraries.
Support for delayed loading of DLL's, much like Microsoft.
Support for most C99 features.
Support for Pocket PC.
Pelles C is free!

History of Pelles C:

It sort of started 1987-1988...

Pelle worked for a consultant company that also sold several products written in
BASIC (for a then popular Swedish micro-computer). When IBM PC started to
catch on, it was decided it would be cheaper to port the BASIC programs to IBM
PC, rather than writing new programs. Several different solutions were tried,
and used, but there were many problems and bugs with that. Finally he
thought: "I really can't do worse myself".

He started writing an interpreter in assembler (this was DOS with 640 kB,
remember?) as a hobby project. When finished, he presented it to his boss. He
eventually said OK. Over time this evolved into a compiler for DOS, a compiler

1 of 2 4/1/2018, 2:15 AM
Pelles C - Overview http://www.pellesc.de/index.php?page=overview&lang=en

for 16-bit Windows, and finally a complete build system for 32-bit Windows (not
only a compiler, but also a linker, a library manager, a make utility, and so on).
After many years working on this, around 1999, it was finally decided that more
main-stream development tools should be used.

Pelle then thought it would be a waste to just throw away a perfectly good
linker, library manager and so on - why not add a compiler for the language
they were all written in: C.

Writing a C compiler from scratch seemed like a huge task, so starting from an
existing project made more sense.

He looked around on the Internet, found several projects, and finally decided
that LCC (from Princeton) was the best for him. It didn't produce very good
code for X86, lacked inline assembly, structured exception handling, and many
other things he was used to from the Microsoft compiler, but it had potential.
It's source code tree wasn't huge, and it seemed to be well written.

Pelle started adding the missing features, improving the code quality, while also
trying to learn LCC. This took several years - including detours into Pocket PC
and the C99 standard. The C runtime and IDE wasn't done in a coffee-break
either. Finally he had something working.

After using it for a while, Pelle thought "if I find this useful, maybe someone
else will...?" so he created his web page, and here we are...

webmaster@pellesc.de - Last change: 2015-03-22

HeffnerCMS Version 1.22 - Admin

Copyright © 2006 - 2018 Christian Heffner

2 of 2 4/1/2018, 2:15 AM