First C programm - need help with eclipse - c

Question

I have install the C/C++ CDT Version of Eclipse. After making a HelloWorld.c file and get the code in there I get an error of "Launch failed. Binary not found".
I found in google that my Eclipse miss the compiler and I install MinGW on my computer and add the path to env variables (tested it with "gcc -v" in cmd and succeded).
1) I can build now, but have no idea how to make a MAKEFILE. - I Read 10 tutorials but don't understand it - ideas?
2) I can build, but not run, I get "Launch failed. Binary not found" - ideas?
Found the error: I never maked a ".c" file -.- after renaming it - works fine.

Answer 1

Revised answer: If you want to avoid writing a real makefile, you can write something like this:
all:
gcc *.c -o runme.exe
You need to specify the binary which gcc outputs (gcc [..] -o <this one>) in the run settings (in the previous example, it should point to runme.exe). Go to Run->Run Configurations, and under C/C++ Application browse and look for runme.exe.
I would, however, strongly advise you to seriously learn about makefile. The beauty of makefiles is that you can use very little features at first and use more and more as you go on (as you saw, writing a "dummy" file was very quick). At first I suggest you write something a bit more "clever" than what I gave you above. Here's a nice tutorial and an example:
all: hello
hello: main.o factorial.o hello.o
g++ main.o factorial.o hello.o -o hello
main.o: main.cpp
g++ -c main.cpp
factorial.o: factorial.cpp
g++ -c factorial.cpp
hello.o: hello.cpp
g++ -c hello.cpp
clean:
rm -rf *o hello
all is what compiles at default. What comes before the : are rule names and after it are the dependencies. i.e, to compile all you need to compile hello (though only if it's been updated), and so forth. the line below the rule is the command to compile. I hope this helps. Please read the tutorial, Makefiles are important.

Answer 2

Add the directory that gcc resides in (C:\MinGW\bin or whatever) to your PATH environment variable and restart Eclipse (important!). This is the process in XP: http://vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/environment.htm. That should sort it out.

Answer 3

1 I suggest you to take a look at this:
http://www-scf.usc.edu/~csci410/handouts/make.pdf
It's a basic gmake tutorial and should be enough to get you started. But right now, for single file project, I suggest you to just skip creating Makefiles and doing in the command prompt:
gcc -o helloworld.exe helloworld.c
And running your executable in the prompt. You can worry about Makefiles later in your learning curve.
2 How did you setup your project?

Answer 4

Make sure you've got a binary parser selected when you bring up properties for the project. At least in my install, none were checked by default. I needed to check Mach-O 64 parser; you'll need to pick one based on what you're doing. I picked this up from http://www.thexploit.com/tools/os-x-10-6-64-bit-eclipse-cdt-missing-binaries/
I didn't have a binary parser selected, and that seems to mean that CDT can't find anything that it recognizes as a binary. It meant in my case that I just got the "Launch failed. Binary not found" message, even though I specified the exact binary, including a fully-qualified path, in the run/debug configurations.
This has nothing to do with builds, just running/debugging. If you're having a problem building, this probably is irrelevant.