Porting applications to the Interix subsystem

Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX provides both the tools and the application programming interface (API) libraries for porting applications to Windows. With the Software Development Kit (SDK), you can host your own tools and applications alongside Windows Services for UNIX tools and programs.

The SDK provides a front end for Microsoft Visual C++ with which you can compile C programs. You can have a UNIX environment for development, but still have the benefits of the native compiler for Windows. Additionally, you get standard UNIX development tools such as the GNU gcc, g++, and g77 compilers, and the gdb debugger.

The SDK supports Visual C++ in the compilation of C programs, but not C++ programs.

For information on the Interix API, see the Interix subsystem interface reference. For information on using NCURSES, see Writing programs with the NCURSES library. For information on the X11R5 reference library, see X11R5 library reference. For information on files that provide general background information, file format specifications, and configuration details, see Interix subsystem information and file formats.

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