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I am trying to build some open source library. I need a package management system to easily download the dependencies. At first I am using MinGW and MSYS. But the included packages are limited. Someone told me to use Mingw-w64 and MSYS2.

I downloaded the mingw-w64-install from here. When running, it reports the following error. How can I fix it?

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And by the way, from the Mingw-w64 download page, I see a lot of download links. Even Cygwin is listed. How are Cygwin and Mingw-w64 related?

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My current understanding is, in the time of MinGW and MSYS, MSYS is just a nice addon to MinGW, while in Mingw-w64 + MSYS2, MSYS2 is stand-alone and Mingw-w64 is just a set of libraries it can work with. Just like Cygwin can download many different packages.

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4 Answers 4

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Unfortunately, the MinGW-w64 installer you used sometimes has this issue. I myself am not sure about why this happens (I think it has something to do with Sourceforge URL redirection or whatever that the installer currently can't handle properly enough).

Anyways, if you're already planning on using MSYS2, there's no need for that installer.

  1. Download MSYS2 from this page.

  2. After the install completes, click on the MSYS2 UCRT64 in the Start menu (or C:\msys64\ucrt64.exe).

    If done correctly, the terminal prompt will say UCRT64 in magenta letters, not MSYS.

  3. Update MSYS2 using pacman -Syuu. If it closes itself during the update, restart it and repeat the same command to finish the update.

    You should routinely update your installation.

  4. Install the toolchain: (i.e. the compiler and some extra tools)

    pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-toolchain

  5. Install any libraries/tools you may need. You can search the repositories by doing

    pacman -Ss name_of_something_i_want_to_install

    e.g.

    pacman -Ss gsl

    and install using

    pacman -S package_name_of_something_i_want_to_install

    e.g.

    pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-gsl

    and from then on the GSL library will be automatically found by your compiler!

    Make sure any compilers and libraries you install have this package prefix: mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-. Only use unprefixed packages for misc command-line utilities (such as grep, sed, make, etc), unless you know what you're doing.

  6. Verify that the compiler is working by doing

    gcc --version

If you want to use the toolchains (with installed libraries) outside of the MSYS2 environment, all you need to do is add C:/msys64/ucrt64/bin to your PATH.

MSYS2 provides several compiler flavors, UCRT64 being one of them. It should be a reasonable default.

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15 Comments

Thanks. How can I get the canonical name of a package that pacman can recognize?
Will it work if you install both 32 and 64 bit toolchains simultaneously?
@Colonel yes, it will install the toolchains (and any 3rd party libraries you install) in separate directories (/mingw32 and /mingw64).
To use in MSYS2 shell I had to do: PATH=/mingw64/bin:$PATH
Using pacman to install mingw-w64 is a great advice. I faced the same issue while trying to install mingw-w64 behing a proxy. Installing MSYS2 first, setting environment variables for the proxy like superuser.com/questions/713582/… and following your answer works perfectly.
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MSYS has not been updated a long time. MSYS2 is more active, and you can download it from MSYS2. It has both the mingw and cygwin fork package.

To install the MinGW-w64 toolchain (reference):

  1. Open the MSYS2 shell from the start menu
  2. Run pacman -Sy pacman to update the package database
  3. Reopen the shell, and run pacman -Syu to update the package database and core system packages
  4. Reopen the shell, and run pacman -Su to update the rest
  5. Install the compiler:
    • For a 32-bit target, run pacman -S mingw-w64-i686-toolchain
    • For a 64-bit target, run pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain
  6. Select which package to install; the default is all
  7. You may also need make. Run pacman -S make
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6 Comments

how do i install specific MinGW-w64 version like x86_64-6.2.0-release-posix-seh-rt_v5-rev1?
Does that mean the mingw installer as described here is not necessary anymore? and I should just install msys2?
Link Reference is broken
any ideas on why msys2 shell would close itself after a second?
In case you need cmake, you have to install pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake and NOT cmake. Normal cmake will lack generators for minGW.
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You can now also get the stand-alone personal build of MinGW-w64 from https://winlibs.com/ which doesn't require any installation; just extract and its ready to use. This allow having multiple toolchains on the same system (e.g., one for Windows 32-bit and another for Windows 64-bit).

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4 Comments

MSYS2 also supports multiple toolchains per installation (and multiple installations). Winlibs is indeed easy to use, but lacks a package manager (i.e. no prebuilt libraries) and a linux-like environment (can't build stuff using Autotools).
@HolyBlackCat Thanks for your insights. I'm actually working on a package manager for winlibs, and I'm making it cross-platform.
Do you know link to : Msys2 package installation for Linux in which one is to build app. for Windows .exe ?
@user17227456 MSYS2 is an emulation of the Linux shell. Running that on Linux makes no sense. Just use the Linux shell and use the MinGW-w64 build tools available in your Linux distribution's package manager cross-compile for Windows (e.g. use x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc instead of gcc to target Windows Intel/AMD 64-bit).
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The most straightforward way, as far as I know, is to use Chocolatey to install MinGW:

choco install mingw

Then check with the command whereis gcc. It is going to be installed in C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\bin.

one more thing, to get make working, just copie (or rename if you wish) with copy mingw32-make.exe make.exe in C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\bin.

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Re "to be installed in C:\ProgramData": Doesn't that depend on the Windows version and the configuration of Windows?
mingw32-make and make are different things, and pretending one is the other won't do any good.
Does this install pacman (the package manager)? One of the main selling points of MSYS2 is its numerous packages...
mingw32-make is a version of make that has been ported to Windows with MinGW. It works in a similar way to make, but with some differences in syntax and behavior due to Windows difference.

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