Minimalist GNU for Windows
Installing MSYS
NOTE: It is simpler to install MinGW before you install MSYS if you plan to use both.
Installing MSYS is as easy as executing a program. The installation is provided by means of a Win32 installer. Currently the installer compiler is INNO Setup version 2. At some point in the future the installer compiler may change so that a more flexible installation can be provided. Choose the version of the package you want; Snapshot, Candidate or Current; execute the installation binary, answer the questions and voila, it's installed. A scripted post install process executes to allow you to associate MinGW with MSYS so that MSYS can find it. Prior to version 1.0.11 MSYS and MinGW could not live in the same root directory. With version 1.0.11 that restriction has been removed and they happily live together.
- NOTE: During the post install process (DOS Window) be careful. If you answer y to the following question
Do you have MinGW installed? [yn ] y
The answer to the subsequent question is not obvious:
Please answer the following in the form of c:/foo/bar. Where is your MinGW installation?
Be sure to use POSIX-compatible forward slash (/) instead of back slash (\) in the path name, for example, c:/MinGW
If you fail to use the forward slash form, MSYS will not find the MinGW installation and will not automatically "normalize" your MSYS environment. If the normalization is not manually done, difficulty is likely to be encountered. This makes the newbie's initial MinGW/MSYS experience unpleasant at times. If a mistake is made, it is easy to uninstall MSYS and re-install it with greater care.
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