Editing Software Development Platforms (section)

===Compilers===

====Microsoft Visual Studio====

Visual Studio is Microsoft's standard compiler and IDE.  The Express version is free.  Just search for "Microsoft Visual Studio Express" to find the correct download site.

Make sure you get Visual C++ 2008 and not the beta for the 2010 version, which fails to compile ParaView.

Note that the default installation of Visual Studio does not include the 64 bit compiler and tools, so you will definitely want to modify this.

Update: Visual Studio C++ 2008 is broken for reading/writing files larger than 4GB.  Visual Studio 2010 must be used.  The Express version does not include 64 bit support however.  You must install the Windows SDK from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/bb980924 .  I installed this alongside Visual Studio Express and it didn't seem to confuse CMake.

====MinGW====

MinGW is a port of gcc to windows.

Installation is somewhat intensive.  Follow the instructions at http://www.mingw.org/wiki/Getting_Started .

NOTE: If you want to build anything with Qt, and you have downloaded a binary version of Qt, then you must use MinGW instead of Visual Studio.  This is because the binary version of Qt are built with MinGW and C++ compilers and not cross-compatible on Windows.  I actually recommend using Visual Studio and building Qt from source, but either route will work.