Introduction

Object files and static libraries created with different compilers, or even with significantly different releases of the same compiler, often cannot be linked together. This issue is not specific to MinGW: many other compilers are mutually incompatible. Build everything from source with the same version of the same compiler if you can.

HOWTO Understanding effects of build directory options on a relocatable MinGW GCC default's paths

1 Summury and purpose of this document

Although there are nor big TODO remaining for this document, some updates are still pending

Why don't wide characters work with libstdc++?

The wide-character parts of the GCC Standard C++ Library (libstdc++) have not yet been fully ported to Windows, so you cannot use most of these features with MinGW.

FIXME: Page under construction; mostly complete now, but may need some clarifications.

I will add to this as time permits; please bear with me. My intent is to provide answers to some remarkably similar, but independently asked, questions which have appeared recently, on the MinGW-Users and MinGW-MSYS lists.

Introduction

This Mini-HOWTO attempts to answer the FAQ: "Why can't the MinGW compilers find my project's header files?"

• My executable is sometimes different, when I compile and recompile the same source. Is this normal?
  • Yes, by default, and by design, ~MinGW's GCC does not produce ConsistentOutput, unless you patch it.

If you're currently interested in a working MinGW cross compiler for Linux, check out the following project:
MinGW cross compiling environment. They have their own mailing list with support for this project (and are separate from the MinGW project and its mailing lists). They use makefiles to build a MinGW cross-compiler and several useful libraries. The makefiles are similar to the BSD ports project and even resemble the Arch build scripts in some ways.

Rest of page updated to current status, as of 15-September-2008.

Previous content of this page was confused, misleading and obsolete. Nevertheless, if you wish to refer to this older content, you may find it here.

For instructions on how to quickly download and install MinGW (including GCC compilers for C, C++, Fortran, Java, and Ada, binutils, Windows API, runtime, and make), please refer to the instructions for Getting Started with MinGW. For more detailed instructions, read HOWTO Install the MinGW GCC Compiler Suite.

Minimalist GNU for Win32 (updated for MinGW gcc 3.4.5)

NOTE:

Much of the information presented on this page is obsolete; updated information may be found here.

Pthreads is part of POSIX and Windows isn't a POSIX system. However, there is a third party library on sourceware.org named pthreads-win32. Sourceware.org provides its own lists and MinGW does not support it but you are free to use it with MinGW at your own risk.