pcmhacking.net

I see alot of open source programs on here and Github. How do you run these programs? They don't have .exe files.

You typically have to compile/build the source code to get the binaries with items from GitHub ... Some do provide binaries, most do not.

For me, it usually says what language it's using on the main github page.. For some reason I like c#... Not saying it's batter or anything, just what I've had the most experience with..

So I have visual studio installed. I had it load everything for c#.. pretty big, need lots of hard drive space..

Since I have visual studio installed I download everything by clicking code and then download source.. Once that's done I unzip it and then double slick on the .sln file(solution file) and it usually loads it right up.. If I'm super lucky when i click build it builds it first try, usually I have errors because of missing things, sometimes I don't have a library installed, etc.. But that's how I get it started..

You can do the same thing for c or c++, etc as far as I know.. I have done a few c++ programs the same say from github..

If you look on the right side of the page there will be a "Releases" section.
Sometimes that will just say "No releases published," in which case you'll need to compile the software yourself.

But often there will be a link to a page that has a description of the release and (at the bottom) an "assets" section that where you can download the .exe file, or a .zip file that contains the .exe and some DLLs.