- Best free c compiler for mac verification#
- Best free c compiler for mac software#
- Best free c compiler for mac code#
This was pretty important, because examples of Mac code were not readily available at this time! (Only the Str2Dec and Dec2Str functions lacked source code, since these were licensed from Apple, not written by Duvall, and therefore shipped in binary form only.) There was even a makeshift console window provided, so you could actually make use of the decidedly command-line-centric functions in the standard library ( printf, getc, etc.) from your Mac applications. Considering that Duvall also developed the Macintosh 68000 Development System (an assembler, known as MDS) for Apple, it is no real surprise that his C development system used the same editor and tools, being nearly drop-in compatible with MDS.Īll of the source code for the C libraries was supplied with the compiler, so programmers could modify it if they wanted, or even use it as a learning guide. It was developed by Bill Duvall, who worked alongside Doug Englebart at Stanford on ARPAnet and later Xerox PARC on Smalltalk. Whether or not it was available at the very beginning, this seems to have been the most popular C compiler for the Mac in the early days, and there is plenty of information available about it.Ĭonsulair Mac C is also notable in that it is one of the few-perhaps the only-early C development systems for Macintosh that were not cross-platform.
However, I'm not sure how long it was after the Mac's introduction that it became available. This review by Léo Laporte in Issue #3 of MacDeveloper magazine says that the author has "been using it full-time since November, '84", so it was at least commercially available by then. It is confirmed by multiple independent sources that Consulair Mac C was available in 1984, but I can't find an exact launch date. Most likely, it never really caught on, so that by the time programmers had gotten serious and the Mac presses were rolling, it had been displaced by. The Atari ST and the Macintosh both used Motorola's 68000 microprocessor, so it makes sense that the same assemblers and compilers could be used for both, but I can't be entirely certain that Hippo-C ran natively on the Macintosh, as opposed to being a cross-compiler for the platform. Most of what I can find discusses it in relation to the Atari ST, for which it was also available. I find a few editions of InfoWorld offering it for sale, one off-handed mention of it in a November 1984 MUG newsletter ("…how about your impressions of the various development environments…Is Hippo C any good, or what?"), but no reviews of it in Macintosh magazines. However, I can find vanishingly little information online about Hippo-C. This is pretty compelling evidence that Hippo-C was the first C compiler for the Mac, available at the computer's launch. Plus, Jobs is wearing a silver bow-tie in the picture, which looks like the same one he wore that fateful day at Apple's Annual Shareholders Meeting. Macintosh was introduced to the world on January 24, 1984, and even if Brown had held a separate launch event a few days later for his C compiler, I doubt he could have persuaded Steve Jobs to show up. (Image courtesy of Carol Rukomii Holladay, via Wikipedia, licensed under CC by-SA.)
Best free c compiler for mac software#
The Wikipedia article on Brown has the following picture, showing him with Steve Jobs, with the caption claiming that the picture was taken "at the launch of Brown's Hippo-C software for Macintosh, January 1984":
Hippo-CĪs far as I can tell, the very first C compiler ever released for the Macintosh was Hippo-C, developed by Wendell Brown, the founder of Hippopotamus Software. All of these compilers were available on other platforms, too, especially the Atari ST.
Best free c compiler for mac verification#
Other early options included Manx Software's Aztec C (see also this site), Megamax C, and Softworks C ( which Kevin Killion claims was "the very first C language compiler for the Mac", for which he wrote the front-end, but I cannot find independent verification for this claim). The two earliest C compilers available for Macintosh were Hippo-C and Consulair Mac C. C was merely a niche language in 1984, and I doubt very many copies of these were sold, but that doesn't mean you didn't have choices! The Macintosh's System Software and ROMs were themselves programmed largely in assembly, with a bit of Pascal thrown in (mostly for pieces that were ported directly from the Lisa). As you said, the most important languages on the Mac in its early days were Microsoft's BASIC, Pascal, and, of course, 68000 assembly.
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