Need help compiling.

I'm running WindowsXP Pro.
and want to know how to run .tar.gz files. How do i compile them? and with what kind of compiler and where i can find one.

I never compiled before i do have Microsft visual C++ but with todays large file variety of tools i see i don't really need it.

would anyone please tell me how i can make .tar.gz files run.
most likely compiling them and making them work. They are compressed source code files i need some help with programing.

as much help as possible would be very much appreciated.

Thnks!

 

.tar.gz files are combined Tape Archive (.tar) and GnuZip/Gzip (.gz) compressed files. The .gz part is uncompressed first - see here http://www.gzip.org/ Then you can extract files from the .tar part by using, for example, the tar xv command in Linux.

The reason for the archive and compression to package files is that the file organisation is retained by the single .tar file but is ineffciently stored and hence (usually) compressed to a .tar.gz.

Once your files are extracted you can use the appropriate compiler on the result.