How to install CC65 on Windows (the quick way)
Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2023 8:28 pm
The CX16 is undergoing active development, so it's always a good idea to get the most recent snapshot build of CC65 from Github, as the stable releases may be outdated for our platform.
Navigate to CC65's Github, click "Actions", click "Snapshot Build", click the most recent build with a green checkmark, scroll down to "Artifacts", then download cc65-snapshot-win64. This is a ZIP file.
1) Extract the ZIP file to a convenient location on your computer, such as "C:\cc65".
2) Add "C:\cc65\bin" to your "Path" environment variable.
3) Open a new command prompt window and type "where cc65" to see if it worked; this should show you the path where you unzipped CC65. (If you see an unexpected path, or you see multiple paths, then you have a conflicting installation of CC65 on your system, and should figure out why it's there before continuing.)
You are now ready to build your source code with CL65. Use "CL65 -t cx16 -o MYAPP.PRG file1.c file2.c file3.c (and so on)" either at the command prompt, or inside a batch file (.BAT).
NOTE: This method assumes that you won't be using makefiles to build your project. If you do want to use makefiles, then you will need to separately install GNU Make, and how you do that will depend on whether you want to run it in a Unix-like environment, or in the standard Windows environment, which will affect how you need to write your makefile, and will possibly affect where you need to put CC65. In other words, that's a complex topic which is best left to another discussion.
Navigate to CC65's Github, click "Actions", click "Snapshot Build", click the most recent build with a green checkmark, scroll down to "Artifacts", then download cc65-snapshot-win64. This is a ZIP file.
1) Extract the ZIP file to a convenient location on your computer, such as "C:\cc65".
2) Add "C:\cc65\bin" to your "Path" environment variable.
3) Open a new command prompt window and type "where cc65" to see if it worked; this should show you the path where you unzipped CC65. (If you see an unexpected path, or you see multiple paths, then you have a conflicting installation of CC65 on your system, and should figure out why it's there before continuing.)
You are now ready to build your source code with CL65. Use "CL65 -t cx16 -o MYAPP.PRG file1.c file2.c file3.c (and so on)" either at the command prompt, or inside a batch file (.BAT).
NOTE: This method assumes that you won't be using makefiles to build your project. If you do want to use makefiles, then you will need to separately install GNU Make, and how you do that will depend on whether you want to run it in a Unix-like environment, or in the standard Windows environment, which will affect how you need to write your makefile, and will possibly affect where you need to put CC65. In other words, that's a complex topic which is best left to another discussion.