This page explains how to download and install MinGW.
The first 3 things you need to know
1. To use MinGW, start with downloading binutils, gcc-core, w32api and runtime. Whatever you'll do you'll always need these. Adding additional languages (g++, g77, ada etc.) may be done now or at any later stage. You may wish to download (the very useful but purely optional) MSYS binaries installation file from 
MinGW downloads page as well. You may need to download additional installation files later (for other languages).
2. Current MinGW users have significantly different expectations from MinGW. The following description may help you to start, while a more detailed explanation is provided later in this text.
- MinGW runtime, MinGW utilities, GCC core installation files - These additional installation files will allow you to compile and run simple (console-style) C programs.
- MinGW can give you more than that. Follow the explanations later in this text for details.
- MSYS installation file - This installation file contains basic Unix-style commands plus a commandline shell. This will give you a MinGW commandline application (to be used instead of Windows(TM)' cmd.exe) together with Unix-style commands like ls, grep, cat, etc..
But remember: to use the MinGW compiler toolchain this is not required -- it simply is a rather useful addition. Note also that while the order of installation is arbitrary it is a good idea to install the compiler toolchain, (MinGW), BEFORE installing MSYS because then the MSYS installation will be automatically set up with the appropriate MinGW paths, etc.
3. Version numbering for Mingw as a whole does not exist; in particular, the version number of the MinGW installer is in no way related to the version of GCC which it installs. Dates of last changes are available from MinGW downloads page. The version of GCC installed may be determined by executing the command `gcc --version'; please report this, if asking for help.
(For those impatient to get up and running real fast, you might like to try the page RealDumbQuickstart.)
(For those frustrated with the following, you might want to try the page SmartQuickStart.) Recommended!?
(If you want to create native Windows applications using GTK+ and Glade, take a look at GladeGuide.)
What to get
The first decision is whether you wish to use the automated installer or resort to manual installation. The automated installer is recommended if you don't care about all the details of the installation. The manual installer gives you full control about everything that happens (and is described later). While the author of these particular lines always does a manual install, be warned this also is the option that lets you break things if you do it wrongly ;-)
Automated Installer
If you're undecided upon what you need or want, we would recommend installing all three packages in the Quick Intro section of this page. If you follow this recommendation, you'll have everything you basically need, and no troubles at all.
Otherwise, you'll probably want to do a custom installation to perfectly suit your needs. Common configurations would be:
- MinGW-NNN.exe only: A native Windows(TM) compiler to compile native Windows(TM) applications. Usually this is paired with an IDE of your choice.
- MSYS-NNN.exe, MinGW-NNN.exe: A shell with a native Windows(TM) compiler to compile native Windows(TM) applications.
- MSYS-NNN.exe, MinGW-NNN.exe, msysDTK-NNN.exe: A shell with automatic configuration developer tools and a native Windows(TM) compiler to compile native Windows(TM) applications.
- MSYS-NNN.exe, msysDVLPR.tar.gz: A shell with a compiler to compile applications that will only run under this shell.
- MSYS-NNN.exe, msysDVLPR.tar.gz, msysDTK-NNN.exe: A shell with automatic configuration developer tools and a compiler to compile applications that will only run under this shell.
- MSYS-NNN.exe, MinGW-NNN.exe, msysDVLPR.tar.gz, msysDTK-NNN.exe: A shell with automatic configuration developer tools and two compilers: one native Windows(TM) compiler to compile native Windows(TM) applications, and a compiler to compile applications that will only run under this shell.
Download
All packages mentioned hereafter can be downloaded from
Quick Intro
This section gives a very brief overview of the installation procedure for MinGW, and related packages; more detailed, package specific instructions will be found below. Note that, unless you are installing for shared use by multiple users, you should not need administrative privileges to install any MinGW package.
NOTE: As of October 16, 2005, the MinGW-4.NN.exe installer is broken, and has been withdrawn from the "current" download offering. It's probably best for noobs to just wait until it's working again. There have been a few threads about this on the mailing list and it looks just too darn hard for newbies to try to install MinGW from the raw packages. If you are desperate to get started, you might like to try the MinGW-3.1.0.exe version, from the "previous" section, or, for the brave, the latest MinGW-5.NN.exe version from "proposed".
Download MinGW-NNN.exe, MSYS-NNN.exe, msysDTK-NNN.exe and install them in this order.
Example:
- Install MinGW to C:\Devel\MinGW
don't install to a directory with spaces!? - Install MSYS to C:\Devel\MSYS\1.0, answer the post-install questions with y; when asked give the path as C:/Devel/MinGW
- Install msysDTK to C:\Devel\MSYS\1.0
- Start C:\Devel\MSYS\1.0\msys.bat.Be happy. You have a decent shell with tab completion, you have vim, you have perl. And of course most other stuff you need to build applications.
Full Description of how to get started
You should almost certainly download the MINGW-NNN.EXE package. It is simpler to install it before you install MSYS, if you plan to use both.
MINGW-NNN.EXE (MinGW)
This package is the compiler toolset. According to page MinGW: A collection of freely available and freely distributable Windows(TM) specific header files and import libraries combined with GNU toolsets that allow one to produce native Windows(TM) programs that do not rely on any 3rd-party C runtime DLLs.
This package is self-sufficient: that means that by just installing this package, you can compile native Windows(TM) applications without any additional packages. Along with an optional IDE, this is all you need, if you don't require a Unix-like shell, or autoconf tools.
This package contains the following components:
- gcc: C compiler
- binutils: includes the assembler (as), linker (ld), static library manager (ar), etc...
- mingw-runtime: headers and import libraries for the C library (msvcrt.dll)
- w32api: Windows API header files and import libraries
mingw32-make?: Windows native build of GNU make? (called mingw32-make.exe, not make.exe)
You can optionally download and install following optional components:
- g++?: C++ compiler
- objc?: Objective C compiler
- g77?: Fortran 77 compiler
- java?: Java compiler
ada?: Ada compiler
All these components are in binary form (the source code is not included in the package, but can be obtained from the same download page as the components). Also, please note that all these programs are MinGW compiled programs: they do not rely on the MSYS DLL; that means these programs are native Windows(TM) programs.
The headers contained in this package are the headers needed to compile native Windows(TM) programs: they are not the same as the headers included in MSYS. In other words, trying to compile source code that is not designed for Windows(TM) with only this package will probably fail miserably.
If mingw32-make exhibits compatibility problems with Unix makefiles, you may be better served by MSYS make, (provided by the MSYS-NNN.exe package).
MSYS-NNN.EXE (MSYS)
The installation of this package is preferably done after installing the MinGW-NNN.exe package as this package will try to automatically configure itself to use the pre-installed MinGW package.
How to install MSYS
How to build MSYS from scratchThis is the main package that contains the shell. If you plan to compile non-native Windows(TM) source code (such as any MSYS source-code) then this package is a must. According to the page MSYS: A Minimal SYStem to provide POSIX/Bourne configure scripts the ability to execute and create a Makefile used by make.
This package contains the following components:
- bash: shell
- rxvt?: terminal
misc. tools: cp, diff, gzip, head, sed, ...
What you do not get are compilation tools like gcc, for this you either need MinGW-NNN.exe (to compile native Windows(TM) applications) or msysDVLPR.tar.gz (to compile MSYS applications).
msysDTK-NNN.exe (MSYS Developer Tool Kit)
How to install msysDTK?
This package provides common packages that are needed by developers but are currently just easier to provide dependent on the msys runtime dll. These were chosen because they are the ones that most developers frequently use and need.
This package contains the following components:
- autoconf?: creates configuration files
- automake?: creates makefiles
- libtool?:
- autogen?:
- openssl?:
- openssh?:
- cvs?: Concurrent Version System
- guile?:
inetutils?:
This package MUST be installed in the same location as MSYS-NNN.exe. Please note that this package is dependent on MSYS-NNN.exe: you won't be able to use it if you haven't also installed MSYS-NNN.exe!
msysDVLPR.tar.gz (MSYS Developer)
How to install msysDVLPR?
This package is the compiler toolset for MSYS and MSYS only. It will compile applications that will require the MSYS DLL; it does not compile native Windows(TM) applications! For the latter, you should install MinGW-NNN.exe
Unlike other packages, this one is an archive file (notice the "tar.gz" instead of "exe" extension). Unzip all the files at the root of your MSYS installation. Just like msysDTK-NNN.exe, this package is dependent on MSYS-NNN.exe
Manual Install
- Download at least the following (or newer) packages from the MinGW download page
-
These are the minimum requirement for a working mingw-gcc-toolchain for C.
Optionally you may want to add any of the following additional languages:
Note that the GCC versions of these files should match the GCC version of the gcc-core installed.
Optionally you may want to add any of the following additional utilities:
- mingw-gdb for debugger
- mingw32-make for make
- mingw-utils for MinGW Utilities
- MSYS for Unix-style commands and shell (see How to install MSYS)
- MSYSDTK for Unix-style developer toolkit
You will also need a program that can extract tar.gz files, such as the GUI-based
WinZip or 7-Zip, or the command-line tar and gzip tools. Command line tools are provided by MSYS, or Google for 'gnu+tools+win32' to find alternatives. The GnuWin32 project provides Windows-native builds of tar and gzip CLI tools.Create a directory (e.g. C:\MinGW), download all packages to C:\MinGW, for each package execute gunzip/untar package, and add C:\MinGW\bin to your PATH environment variable:
Example:
C:\Documents and Settings\Owner> cd /d c:\ C:\> md MinGW C:\> cd MinGW
Download all packages to C:\MinGW
C:\MinGW> gzip -d -c binutils-2.17.50-20060824-1.tar.gz | tar x C:\MinGW> gzip -d -c gcc-core-3.4.5-20060117-3.tar.gz | tar x C:\MinGW> gzip -d -c mingw-runtime-3.14.tar.gz | tar x C:\MinGW> gzip -d -c w32api-3.11.tar.gz | tar x C:\MinGW> set path=C:\MinGW\bin;%path%
The whole C:\MinGW subtree is fully relocatable which means there can be several different versions of the MinGW toolchain installed in parallel, e.g. in directories C:\MinGW-3.3.3, C:\MinGW-3.4.2 and C:\MinGW-3.4.5. Switching between these is merely a matter of renaming directories, assuming C:\MinGW\bin has been added to the path. You can permanently add C:\MinGW\bin to the path by opening the System control panel, going to the Advanced tab, and clicking the Environmental Variables button.
Updating single packages (e.g. when there is a new version of the w32api) can be done by copying the new package to C:\MinGW and unpacking as above to overwrite the older version. This manual update also works with an initial automated install.
- Download at least the following (or newer) packages from the
Expanding functionality
mingwPORT packages may be used to add functionality to your MSYS/MinGW installation.
