TODO: Convert to the MediaWiki formatting as discussed at Converting Old MinGWiki Pages

TODO: Revise untar instructions.

Using the (possibly "Proposed"/"Candidate") Installer

If you are new to MinGW, the recommended way to begin is to download an installer executable from https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2435&package_id=240780 and run it (e.g. "MinGW-5.1.4.exe" -- currently there is only a 'Proposed' Version). This package will install mingw-runtime, w32api, GCC, binutils and mingw32-make but it may not be the latest versions of the individual packages. Once you have all these packages (although mingw32-make is not necessary if you have MSYS or Cygwin), you may download updated individual packages like GCC and extract them into the MinGW directory.

• Warning:* For versions prior to MSYS-1.0.11; do not install MinGW into the same path as MSYS (but it can be a subdirectory as long as non-MSYS executables are not in the MSYS bin directory)

• Warning2:* When you install msys and mingw, and have /mingw mapped to your mingw directory (as is the default), if you install ports or install any programs, they must install to /mingw to be available for gcc to use (i.e. ./configure --prefix=/mingw).

Manual installation (non one-click method)

Instead of using an installer you can as well get all required packets and unpack them manually into a subdirectory. In fact that's what this writer is doing himself.

Download the packages

At least the following (or newer) packages from the

• MinGW download page http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2435&package_id=82721

are needed (the automated mingw installer I think includes all of these and sets up the right directory for you--what it's doing is downloading compilers and default header files, and putting them in one place on your system, so the future builds will use those compilers and directories for building):

• GNU Binutils: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2435&package_id=11290
• GCC Version 3: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2435&package_id=82723
• MINGW Runtime: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2435&package_id=11598
• Windows 32 API: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2435&package_id=11550

Note that you will need gcc-core for other gcc language frontends to work properly.

These files are gzipped tarballs, Linux users will probably be familiar with .tar.gz files, but they are not that common under Windows. Essentially they are compressed folders like zip files. In order to access the contents you will need to decompress them, this requires that you have gzip and tar installed on your machine. Linux comes with these as standard in every distribution, but under Windows you will need to install them manually. Windows versions can be found at:

• Gzip for Windows: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/gzip.htm

and

• LibArchive for Windows, TAR: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/tar.htm.

Download the setup files and install the applications. Before you use them you need to tell Windows where to find them; specifically this means adding the install directory to your PATH. To do this carry out the following procedure (Warning - adding entries to the path is totally benign, however if you delete you mess up your path string then you could seriously compromise the functioning of your computer, please be careful):

1. Right-click on "My Computer" and select "Properties".
2. Click Advanced -> Environment Variables.
3. In the box entitled "System Variables" scroll down to the line that says "Path" and double-click the entry.
4. You will be presented with a dialog box with two text boxes, the bottom text box allows you to edit the Path variable. It is *very* important that you do not delete the existing values in the path string, this will cause all sorts of problems for you!
5. Scroll to the end of the string and at the end add ";<installation-directory>\bin". Here <installation-directory> is the full address of the installation directory; if you accepted the defaults when installing tar and gzip then it will (probably) be "C:\Program Files\GnuWin32". Don't forget the semicolon, this separates the entries in the path.
6. press OK -> OK -> OK and you are done.

Create install directory

Create a directory to install all the stuff into. This writer usually creates c:\MinGW and copies all of the above files in there. Now issue the following commands, remember to change the file names to match your downloads:

  cd /d c:\MinGW
  gzip -df binutils-2.16.91-20060119-1.tar.gz
  tar -xf binutils-2.16.91-20060119-1.tar
  cd info
  ren dir dir.binutils
  cd ..
  gzip -df gcc-core-3.4.5-20060117-1.tar.gz
  tar -xf gcc-core-3.4.5-20060117-1.tar
  cd info
  copy dir dir.gcc
  copy dir+dir.binutils
  cd ..
  gzip -df gcc-g++-3.4.5-20060117-1.tar.gz
  tar -xf gcc-g++-3.4.5-20060117-1.tar
  gzip -df mingw-runtime-3.9.tar.gz
  tar -xf mingw-runtime-3.9.tar
  cd info
  ren dir dir.gcc
  cd ..
  gzip -df w32api-3.6.tar.gz
  tar -xf w32api-3.6.tar
  

(The commands copying and concatenating the info-dir files are really a rather crude way of creating a combined dir file and could use some enhancement.)

Additional programming languages

To add additional languages apply some or all of the following commands:

  cd /d c:\MinGW
  tar xvzf gcc-ada-3.4.5-20060117-1.tar.gz
  tar xvzf gcc-g77-3.4.5-20060117-1.tar.gz
  tar xvzf gcc-java-3.4.5-20060117-1.tar.gz
  tar xvzf gcc-objc-3.4.5-20060117-1.tar.gz
  

MSYS installation

You may also want to install MSYS.

See also: Getting Started