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I'm fairly new to C/C++ but have never tried to include external libraries before in my projects as I've mostly been doing tutorials and such. These have been mostly console applications/games. When I was looking for an alternative to the "evil" system(" ") commands I was pointed to Curses.

Now I've gone to the GitHub for both branches of the PDCurses source library (wmcbrine's branch and Bill-Gray's Branch) but every time I try to build library it returns multiple errors (happy to provide a image of the errors if need be).

The biggest issue is that the documentation is a little difficult to understand for an absolute beginner and most tutorials are extremely outdated. I was hoping that someone know's of a relevant tutorial on how to get PDCurses up and running on windows (for C++) or could explain how to do it on here.

oraqlle
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    Unfortunately, it's true that someone who's "new to C/C++" may, indeed, find the task of compiling a moderately complex third party library like this one, from scratch, to be quite a big task. It's quite understandable. Most C++ beginners spend about 3-5 years learning the core fundamentals, of the most complex general purpose programming language in use today, before attempting to learn moderately complicated third party libraries. Don't get discouraged, you should continue to work your way through each chapter in your C++ textbook, one by one, and eventually these things will make sense. – Sam Varshavchik Aug 24 '20 at 01:18
  • @SamVarshavchik unfortunately, I'm not learning C++ at school. I'm doing it in may own time trying to piece the craziness together slowly . And as such I don't have a textbook to follow. I do appreciate you taking the time to respond though. Is there a book that you would recommend someone who is self-taught such as myself to read. Obviously doesn't haven't to be on this topic specifically but like a beginners book would be awesome. Thank you. – oraqlle Aug 24 '20 at 09:44
  • Stackoverflow.com [maintains a list of C++ textbooks just for this special occasion](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/388242/the-definitive-c-book-guide-and-list). – Sam Varshavchik Aug 24 '20 at 10:45
  • @opacityy [Install pdcurses on Visual Studio 2017](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42708392/install-pdcurses-on-visual-studio-2017) looks to be relatively recent. – dxiv Aug 24 '20 at 20:12
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    @dxiv, thank you for your response. After really reading the ReadME.md file closely I managed to piece together the 4 versions of the library I wanted/needed. It was just the wording in it that made it confusing how to set up the library. But thank you for taking the time to link useful material. – oraqlle Aug 25 '20 at 01:44
  • @SamVarshavchik, also I forgot to thank you for giving the link to the post about C++ books. It was super useful to see what the overall community recommends, so thank you. – oraqlle Aug 26 '20 at 04:37

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So, I have figured out how to get PDCurses compiled using it's Makefiles (Makefile.vc specifically) and such.

To anyone who may have issue doing this in future, make sure to read the README.md file very slowly and carefully. From a beginners perspective it was a bit vague but it does contain all the information needed it in it, it should just be read a few time .

It also should be noted that when compiling the library into a .dll for Visual Studio 2019 using the nmake function, you have to run the command in the x86/x64 Native Tools Command Prompt. Which one you use will depend on the architecture you plan to build your project in. If your not sure where to find it, open you start menu>all apps>scroll down to the folder "Visual Studio 2019" and they all should be in there.

Run the "nmake" command in this shell configures a .bat file which optimises for x86 or x64 architecture respectively. Hopefully this helps anyone who might ask this (or a similar) question.

oraqlle
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