How to program in C on Mac Leopard without XCode IDE ?

Question

Hi,

I have just come to Mac world from Linux world and I love my way around in Mac environment. I want to write and practice simple C programs in mac and I was searching for the tools I require. Most (All) of the resources in the web ask me to use XCode as IDE to do programming in C on Mac. XCode, for my purpose seems to be an overkill. I am in no way interested in developing iPhone or Mac GUI application. All I want is

1. enter C programs using a text editor,
2. compile it ,
3. and get the output in a Console.

How can I do it ?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Just use gcc.

Answer 2

the 3 steps you give are simply the answer already:

1. use text editor of choice
2. use eg Terminal and compile on command line (simply using gcc, or cmake/make or so for more complex programs)
3. run program on console

Answer 3

Your could also use XCode to compile simple command line tools.

Start XCode File -> New Project Mac OS X -> Application -> Command Line tool

XCode has a really nice syntax highlighting and code completition and gdb integrated.

Answer 4

Follow on from PatrickS's answer - I didn't read the original question clearly, but personally - other than following a couple of ObjC tutorials - the only time I've used XCode is AS a C IDE.

The feedback on compile errors is neat (visually integrated into the IDE rather than having to match lines from the compiler output), and getting better (due to integration with the underlying clang project).