Programming c in microsoft visual studio 2010 professional, Help with linking files

[baldwindc]

I am taking a data structures class and we are using the standard gcc compiler on a unix system. This is fine and I have no troubles using it, but I would like to begin using an IDE for my labs. I am trying Visual Studio 2010 Professional with my .c files and am able to get very simple programs to compile and execute, however the current lab I am doing requires me to first compile the .c file into a .o file before linking it to another .o file using gcc filename1.o filename2.o -o filename. From what I understand the object files on unix and windows platforms differ, but I still do not understand exactly what a .object file is. This i can look up. What I would like to know, is there a good IDE for the c language ( linux or windows is fine) and if Visual Studio is the recontamination how would I go about compiling my file into an object file, linking it, and then running it.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[Banfa]

You can use Visual Studio its OK. But if you are using Linux and Windows you may want to try something like Code:Blocks or Eclipse which are multi-platform and run on both Linux and Windows, that way you only have to learn the ins and outs of 1 IDE that you can use everywhere.

Both those IDEs use gcc on Linux and MinGW(a gcc port) on Windows.

[baldwindc]

Thanks. That helped. Using code blocks. Was still having some issues getting it to produce the .o file and then link to another but i just used a custom makefile. Will mark as solved.