How to install MinGW-w64 and MSYS2?

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 newly created “MSYS2 Shell” option under either MSYS2 64-bit or MSYS2 32-bit in the Start menu (or mingw64.exe or mingw32.exe in the installation directory).

    If done correctly, the terminal prompt will say MINGW64 or MINGW32 respectively, 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 a toolchain

    a) for 64-bit:

    pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain

    b) for 32-bit:

    pacman -S mingw-w64-i686-toolchain

    This includes GCC (the compiler), GDB (the debugger), and more.

  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-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-x86_64- for 64-bit or mingw-w64-i686- for 32-bit). 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 <MSYS2 root>/mingw64/bin or <MSYS2 root>/mingw32/bin to your PATH.

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