I spotted this the other day. A C and C++ development distribution for Windows called w64devkit. It’s less than 80 MB and you don’t need to install it so you could easily fit it onto a USB memory stick or download it.

As the author (Chris Wellons) says “Despite its simple nature and small packaging, w64devkit is almost everything you need to develop any professional desktop application, from a command line utility to a AAA game”. Note it doesn’t include source control, nor does it access the internet, though no doubt you could. So you could backup stuff say to GitHub or wherever.

I am fan of software like this that you can take with you on a laptop or a memory stick. You don’t always have to have a full dev system with multiple monitors, Visual Studio etc.

If you’re interested, do read the entire blog post.