How to use mingw in windows

Using GCC with MinGW

In this tutorial, you configure Visual Studio Code to use the GCC C++ compiler (g++) and GDB debugger from mingw-w64 to create programs that run on Windows.

After configuring VS Code, you will compile and debug a simple Hello World program in VS Code. This tutorial does not teach you about GCC, GDB, Mingw-w64, or the C++ language. For those subjects, there are many good resources available on the Web.

If you have any problems, feel free to file an issue for this tutorial in the VS Code documentation repository.

Prerequisites

To successfully complete this tutorial, you must do the following steps:

1. Install Visual Studio Code.

2. Install the C/C++ extension for VS Code. You can install the C/C++ extension by searching for ‘c++’ in the Extensions view (⇧⌘X (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+X)).

   

3. Get the latest version of Mingw-w64 via MSYS2, which provides up-to-date native builds of GCC, Mingw-w64, and other helpful C++ tools and libraries. You can download the latest installer from the MSYS2 page or use this link to the installer.

4. Follow the Installation instructions on the MSYS2 website to install Mingw-w64. Take care to run each required Start menu and pacman command.

5. Install the Mingw-w64 toolchain (pacman -S --needed base-devel mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain). Run the pacman command in a MSYS2 terminal. Accept the default to install all the members in the toolchain group.

6. Add the path to your Mingw-w64 bin folder to the Windows PATH environment variable by using the following steps:

   1. In the Windows search bar, type ‘settings’ to open your Windows Settings.
   2. Search for Edit environment variables for your account.
   3. Choose the Path variable in your User variables and then select Edit.
   4. Select New and add the Mingw-w64 destination folder path to the system path. The exact path depends on which version of Mingw-w64 you have installed and where you installed it. If you used the settings above to install Mingw-w64, then add this to the path: C:msys64mingw64bin.
   5. Select OK to save the updated PATH. You will need to reopen any console windows for the new PATH location to be available.

Check your MinGW installation

To check that your Mingw-w64 tools are correctly installed and available, open a new Command Prompt and type:

gcc --version
g++ --version
gdb --version

1. If you don’t see the expected output or g++ or gdb is not a recognized command, make sure your PATH entry matches the Mingw-w64 binary location where the compilers are located. If the compilers do not exist at that PATH entry, make sure you followed the instructions on the MSYS2 website to install Mingw-w64.
2. If gcc has the correct output but not gdb, then you need to install the packages you are missing from the Mingw-w64 toolset.
   • Missing the mingw-w64-gdb package is one cause of the «The value of miDebuggerPath is invalid.» message upon attempted compilation if your PATH is correct.

Create Hello World

From a Windows command prompt, create an empty folder called projects where you can place all your VS Code projects. Then create a sub-folder called helloworld, navigate into it, and open VS Code in that folder by entering the following commands:

mkdir projects
cd projects
mkdir helloworld
cd helloworld
code .

The «code .» command opens VS Code in the current working folder, which becomes your «workspace». Accept the Workspace Trust dialog by selecting Yes, I trust the authors since this is a folder you created.

As you go through the tutorial, you will see three files created in a .vscode folder in the workspace:

• tasks.json (build instructions)
• launch.json (debugger settings)
• c_cpp_properties.json (compiler path and IntelliSense settings)

Add a source code file

In the File Explorer title bar, select the New File button and name the file helloworld.cpp.

Add hello world source code

Now paste in this source code:

#include <iostream>
#include <vector>
#include <string>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
    vector<string> msg {"Hello", "C++", "World", "from", "VS Code", "and the C++ extension!"};

    for (const string& word : msg)
    {
        cout << word << " ";
    }
    cout << endl;
}

Now press ⌘S (Windows, Linux Ctrl+S) to save the file. Notice how the file you just added appears in the File Explorer view (⇧⌘E (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+E)) in the side bar of VS Code:

You can also enable Auto Save to automatically save your file changes, by checking Auto Save in the main File menu.

The Activity Bar on the far left lets you open different views such as Search, Source Control, and Run. You’ll look at the Run view later in this tutorial. You can find out more about the other views in the VS Code User Interface documentation.

Note: When you save or open a C++ file, you may see a notification from the C/C++ extension about the availability of an Insiders version, which lets you test new features and fixes. You can ignore this notification by selecting the X (Clear Notification).

Explore IntelliSense

In your new helloworld.cpp file, hover over vector or string to see type information. After the declaration of the msg variable, start typing msg. as you would when calling a member function. You should immediately see a completion list that shows all the member functions, and a window that shows the type information for the msg object:

You can press the Tab key to insert the selected member; then, when you add the opening parenthesis, you will see information about any arguments that the function requires.

Run helloworld.cpp

Remember, the C++ extension uses the C++ compiler you have installed on your machine to build your program. Make sure you have a C++ compiler installed before attempting to run and debug helloworld.cpp in VS Code.

1. Open helloworld.cpp so that it is the active file.

2. Press the play button in the top right corner of the editor.

   

3. Choose C/C++: g++.exe build and debug active file from the list of detected compilers on your system.

   

You’ll only be asked to choose a compiler the first time you run helloworld.cpp. This compiler will be set as the «default» compiler in tasks.json file.

1. After the build succeeds, your program’s output will appear in the integrated Terminal.

   

The first time you run your program, the C++ extension creates tasks.json, which you’ll find in your project’s .vscode folder. tasks.json stores build configurations.

Your new tasks.json file should look similar to the JSON below:

{
  "tasks": [
    {
      "type": "cppbuild",
      "label": "C/C++: g++.exe build active file",
      "command": "C:\msys64\mingw64\bin\g++.exe",
      "args": [
        "-fdiagnostics-color=always",
        "-g",
        "${file}",
        "-o",
        "${fileDirname}\${fileBasenameNoExtension}.exe"
      ],
      "options": {
        "cwd": "${fileDirname}"
      },
      "problemMatcher": ["$gcc"],
      "group": {
        "kind": "build",
        "isDefault": true
      },
      "detail": "Task generated by Debugger."
    }
  ],
  "version": "2.0.0"
}

Note: You can learn more about tasks.json variables in the variables reference.

The command setting specifies the program to run; in this case that is g++.
The args array specifies the command-line arguments that will be passed to g++. These arguments must be specified in the order expected by the compiler.

This task tells g++ to take the active file (${file}), compile it, and create an executable file in the current directory (${fileDirname}) with the same name as the active file but with the .exe extension (${fileBasenameNoExtension}.exe), resulting in helloworld.exe for our example.

The label value is what you will see in the tasks list; you can name this whatever you like.

The detail value is what you will as the description of the task in the tasks list. It’s highly recommended to rename this value to differentiate it from similar tasks.

From now on, the play button will read from tasks.json to figure out how to build and run your program. You can define multiple build tasks in tasks.json, and whichever task is marked as the default will be used by the play button. In case you need to change the default compiler, you can run Tasks: Configure default build task. Alternatively you can modify the tasks.json file and remove the default by replacing this segment:

    "group": {
        "kind": "build",
        "isDefault": true
    },

with this:

    "group": "build",

Modifying tasks.json

You can modify your tasks.json to build multiple C++ files by using an argument like "${workspaceFolder}/*.cpp" instead of ${file}.This will build all .cpp files in your current folder. You can also modify the output filename by replacing "${fileDirname}\${fileBasenameNoExtension}.exe" with a hard-coded filename (for example "${workspaceFolder}\myProgram.exe").

Debug helloworld.cpp

1. Go back to helloworld.cpp so that it is the active file.
2. Set a breakpoint by clicking on the editor margin or using F9 on the current line.
   
3. From the drop-down next to the play button, select Debug C/C++ File.
   
   
4. Choose C/C++: g++ build and debug active file from the list of detected compilers on your system (you’ll only be asked to choose a compiler the first time you run/debug helloworld.cpp).
   

The play button has two modes: Run C/C++ File and Debug C/C++ File. It will default to the last-used mode. If you see the debug icon in the play button, you can just click the play button to debug, instead of using the drop-down.

Explore the debugger

Before you start stepping through the code, let’s take a moment to notice several changes in the user interface:

• The Integrated Terminal appears at the bottom of the source code editor. In the Debug Output tab, you see output that indicates the debugger is up and running.

• The editor highlights the line where you set a breakpoint before starting the debugger:

  

• The Run and Debug view on the left shows debugging information. You’ll see an example later in the tutorial.

• At the top of the code editor, a debugging control panel appears. You can move this around the screen by grabbing the dots on the left side.

  

Step through the code

Now you’re ready to start stepping through the code.

1. Click or press the Step over icon in the debugging control panel.

   

   This will advance program execution to the first line of the for loop, and skip over all the internal function calls within the vector and string classes that are invoked when the msg variable is created and initialized. Notice the change in the Variables window on the left.

   

   In this case, the errors are expected because, although the variable names for the loop are now visible to the debugger, the statement has not executed yet, so there is nothing to read at this point. The contents of msg are visible, however, because that statement has completed.

2. Press Step over again to advance to the next statement in this program (skipping over all the internal code that is executed to initialize the loop). Now, the Variables window shows information about the loop variables.

3. Press Step over again to execute the cout statement. (Note that as of the March 2019 release, the C++ extension does not print any output to the Debug Console until the loop exits.)

4. If you like, you can keep pressing Step over until all the words in the vector have been printed to the console. But if you are curious, try pressing the Step Into button to step through source code in the C++ standard library!

   

   To return to your own code, one way is to keep pressing Step over. Another way is to set a breakpoint in your code by switching to the helloworld.cpp tab in the code editor, putting the insertion point somewhere on the cout statement inside the loop, and pressing F9. A red dot appears in the gutter on the left to indicate that a breakpoint has been set on this line.

   

   Then press F5 to start execution from the current line in the standard library header. Execution will break on cout. If you like, you can press F9 again to toggle off the breakpoint.

   When the loop has completed, you can see the output in the Integrated Terminal, along with some other diagnostic information that is output by GDB.

   

Set a watch

Sometimes you might want to keep track of the value of a variable as your program executes. You can do this by setting a watch on the variable.

1. Place the insertion point inside the loop. In the Watch window, click the plus sign and in the text box, type word, which is the name of the loop variable. Now view the Watch window as you step through the loop.

   

2. Add another watch by adding this statement before the loop: int i = 0;. Then, inside the loop, add this statement: ++i;. Now add a watch for i as you did in the previous step.

3. To quickly view the value of any variable while execution is paused on a breakpoint, you can hover over it with the mouse pointer.

   

Customize debugging with launch.json

When you debug with the play button or F5, the C++ extension creates a dynamic debug configuration on the fly.

There are cases where you’d want to customize your debug configuration, such as specifying arguments to pass to the program at runtime. You can define custom debug configurations in a launch.json file.

To create launch.json, choose Add Debug Configuration from the play button drop-down menu.

You’ll then see a dropdown for various predefined debugging configurations. Choose C/C++: g++.exe build and debug active file.

VS Code creates a launch.json file, which looks something like this:

{
  "version": "0.2.0",
  "configurations": [
    {
      "name": "C/C++: g++.exe build and debug active file",
      "type": "cppdbg",
      "request": "launch",
      "program": "${fileDirname}\${fileBasenameNoExtension}.exe",
      "args": [],
      "stopAtEntry": false,
      "cwd": "${fileDirname}",
      "environment": [],
      "externalConsole": false,
      "MIMode": "gdb",
      "miDebuggerPath": "C:\msys64\mingw64\bin\gdb.exe",
      "setupCommands": [
        {
          "description": "Enable pretty-printing for gdb",
          "text": "-enable-pretty-printing",
          "ignoreFailures": true
        }
      ],
      "preLaunchTask": "C/C++: g++.exe build active file"
    }
  ]
}

In the JSON above, program specifies the program you want to debug. Here it is set to the active file folder (${fileDirname}) and active filename with the .exe extension (${fileBasenameNoExtension}.exe), which if helloworld.cpp is the active file will be helloworld.exe. The args property is an array of arguments to pass to the program at runtime.

By default, the C++ extension won’t add any breakpoints to your source code and the stopAtEntry value is set to false.

Change the stopAtEntry value to true to cause the debugger to stop on the main method when you start debugging.

From now on, the play button and F5 will read from your launch.json file when launching your program for debugging.

C/C++ configurations

If you want more control over the C/C++ extension, you can create a c_cpp_properties.json file, which will allow you to change settings such as the path to the compiler, include paths, C++ standard (default is C++17), and more.

You can view the C/C++ configuration UI by running the command C/C++: Edit Configurations (UI) from the Command Palette (⇧⌘P (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+P)).

This opens the C/C++ Configurations page. When you make changes here, VS Code writes them to a file called c_cpp_properties.json in the .vscode folder.

Here, we’ve changed the Configuration name to GCC, set the Compiler path dropdown to the g++ compiler, and the IntelliSense mode to match the compiler (gcc-x64).

Visual Studio Code places these settings in .vscodec_cpp_properties.json. If you open that file directly, it should look something like this:

{
  "configurations": [
    {
      "name": "GCC",
      "includePath": ["${workspaceFolder}/**"],
      "defines": ["_DEBUG", "UNICODE", "_UNICODE"],
      "windowsSdkVersion": "10.0.18362.0",
      "compilerPath": "C:/msys64/mingw64/bin/g++.exe",
      "cStandard": "c17",
      "cppStandard": "c++17",
      "intelliSenseMode": "windows-gcc-x64"
    }
  ],
  "version": 4
}

You only need to add to the Include path array setting if your program includes header files that are not in your workspace or in the standard library path.

Compiler path

The extension uses the compilerPath setting to infer the path to the C++ standard library header files. When the extension knows where to find those files, it can provide features like smart completions and Go to Definition navigation.

The C/C++ extension attempts to populate compilerPath with the default compiler location based on what it finds on your system. The extension looks in several common compiler locations.

The compilerPath search order is:

• First check for the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler
• Then look for g++ on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)
• Then g++ for Mingw-w64.

If you have Visual Studio or WSL installed, you may need to change compilerPath to match the preferred compiler for your project. For example, if you installed Mingw-w64 version 8.1.0 using the i686 architecture, Win32 threading, and sjlj exception handling install options, the path would look like this: C:Program Files (x86)mingw-w64i686-8.1.0-win32-sjlj-rt_v6-rev0mingw64bing++.exe.

Troubleshooting

MSYS2 is installed, but g++ and gdb are still not found

You must follow the steps on the MSYS2 website and use the MSYS CLI to install Mingw-w64, which contains those tools. You will also need to install the full Mingw-w64 toolchain (pacman -S --needed base-devel mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain) to get the gdb debugger.

MinGW 32-bit

If you need a 32-bit version of the MinGW toolset, consult the Downloading section on the MSYS2 wiki. It includes links to both 32-bit and 64-bit installation options.

Next steps

• Explore the VS Code User Guide.
• Review the Overview of the C++ extension.
• Create a new workspace, copy your .vscode JSON files to it, adjust the necessary settings for the new workspace path, program name, and so on, and start coding!

5/13/2022

MinGW (“Minimalist GNU for Windows”) is a complete runtime environment for gcc to support binaries native to Windows 64-bit and 32-bit operating systems. With MinGW we can build C programs for windows. This tool is also required to build C-programs for microcontrollers. We will be seeing how to write codes for microcontrollers without using the any IDE. And we will use the MinGW compiler along with the microcontroller family toolchain to build the code. We will install mingw and configure it for running the “make” files

This post is the first step in the complete build process. In this post, we will look at installing mingw and adding it to the environment variables.

1.1 Download MingGW

It contains Make that we will be using in Command Prompt on Windows 10.

1.2 Install MinGW

We will now see how to install minGW. In this step, we will look at the important options that need to be selected.

Keep the Installation Directory the same as shown below.

1.2.1 Navigate to your Desktop

Open MinGW Installer. Select Basic Setup, navigate to Packages and Right click on “mingw-developer-toolkit-bin”, “mingw32-base-bin” and “msys-base-bin” Packages and select Mark for Installation.

1.2.2 Navigate to the Top left corner and Left click on Installation then click Apply Changes.

1.2.3 The packages should now be Green (if not, just repeat the process), if they are successfully installed then close the Installation Manager.

1.3 Rename to Make

Navigate to C:MingGWbin. Rename “mingw32-make” to “make”. This will make it easier to use Make in the Command Prompt.

1.3.1 Let’s add Make for usage in Command Prompt.

Press the “Windows Icon” on your keyboard, search and open “Edit the system environment variables”.

1.3.2 Click on “Environment Variables”

1.3.2 Under “System variables”, scroll down to “Path” and double-click.

1.3.3 Click on “New” and add the location “C:MingGWbin” to environment variable and press “OK”.

1.4 Testing Make

Press the “Windows Icon” on your keyboard, search and open “Command Prompt”.

1.4.1 Type “make –version” to confirm that it works. Recheck Step 1.3 – 1.4 if it doesn’t work.

MinGW also called as Minimalistic GNU for Windows is a popular compiler for C and C++ and used for the development of native MS-Windows applications. It does not depend on any 3rd party tools or libraries but relies on the several DLLs provided by Microsoft as components of the operating system. Out of these DLLs, MSVCRT.DLL i.e. Microsoft C runtime library is the primary one. Apart from the system components, the threaded applications must use freely distributable thread support DLL, provided as part of MinGW itself. You may consider using Cygwin for POSIX application deployment.

Below listed are the features and components provided by MinGW. You may also refer MinGW for more details.

• A port of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), including C, C++, ADA and Fortran compilers;
• GNU Binutils for Windows (assembler, linker, archive manager)
• A command-line installer, with optional GUI front-end, (mingw-get) for MinGW and MSYS deployment on MS-Windows
• A GUI first-time setup tool (mingw-get-setup), to get you up and running with mingw-get.

In this tutorial, we will install MinGW on windows and write, compile, and execute our Hello World program in C++.

Step 1 — Download MinGW

Go to the Download Page to start downloading mingw-w64. It will show various download options as shown in Fig 1.

Download MinGW-W64-builds as highlighted in Fig 1.

You may also download and install MinGW Installation Manager in case you are planning only for the 32-bit compiler. The MinGW-W64 provides both 32-bit and 64-bit compilers.

Download MinGW Installation Manager as highlighted in Fig 2.

Step 2 — Install MinGW-W64

Now execute the MinGW-W64-builds executable downloaded by us in the previous step. It will show the welcome screen as shown in Fig 3.

Click on the Next Button to continue with the installation. It will show the settings screen as shown in Fig 4.

Note that I have selected x86_64 architecture in order to support 64-bit instructions. You may continue with i686 for 32-bit instructions. Also, I have selected the posix option of Threads settings for programs involving multithreading. You may select the win32 option based on your needs. Now click on the Next Button to continue with the installation. The next screen asks for the installation path as shown in Fig 5.

Make sure that you provide an installation path without any spaces. Now click on the Next Button to finish the installation.

It might show you error specific to fail to download. I tried a few times and got success in 3rd attempt. You may also continue with manual installation in case it failed multiple times. You can simply download the archive of MinGW-W64 and extract it to the desired location.

It will show the download progress and status as shown in Fig 6, Fig 7, and Fig 8.

Now click on the Next Button after download completes. It will show the success message as shown in Fig 9.

Click on the Finish Button to close the installer. Now add the bind directory of MinGW-W64 to the system path as shown in Fig 10.

Step 3 — Install MinGW

In this step, we will install the MinGW distributed by the official website as shown in Fig 2. Execute the installer downloaded in previous steps. It will show the welcome screen as shown in Fig 11.

Click on the Install Button to start the installation. It will ask for the installation directory as shown in Fig 12.

Click on the Continue Button to start the installation. It will show the progress as shown in Fig 13 and Fig 14.

Click on the Continue Button to launch the installation manger as shown in Fig 15.

Choose the package GCC as shown in Fig 16.

Click on the Apply Button to apply the changes as shown in Fig 17.

Click on the Apply Changes Button. It will show the confirmation message as shown in Fig 18.

Click on the Apply Button to install GCC. It will show the Package progress as shown in Fig 19 and Fig 20.

Click on the Close Icon and also close the installation manager to complete the installation of the compiler required to compile the programs.

You may add the MinGW path to bin directory which is C:cppmingwbin in my case to system path as we did for MinGW-W64. Make sure that you keep only one compiler path at a time among MinGW and MinGW-W64.

Step 4 — Getting started with C — Hello World

Write your first C program as shown below and save in a file hello.c.

#include<stdio.h>
int main() {
	printf( "Hello World" );
}

Compile and execute the program using the command as shown below.

# Compile and make executable
gcc hello.c -o hello.exe

It will compile the program and generate the executable i.e. hello.exe. We can simply type hello to execute the program. It will print Hello World on the console as shown in Fig 21.

Step 5 — Getting started with C++ — Hello World

We can repeat the previous step to write the Hello World program in C++. Write your first C++ program as shown below and save it to hello.cpp.

#include<iostream>  
using namespace std; 
int main() {
	cout << "Hello World";
	return 0;
}

Compile and execute the program using the command as shown below.

# Compile and make executable
g++ hello.cpp -o hello.exe

It will compile the program and generate the executable i.e. hello.exe. We can simply type hello to execute the program. It will print Hello World on the console as shown in Fig 22.

This is how we can install MinGW and MinGW-W64 and configure the system path to access the executables from the command line. We also wrote our first C and CPP programs, compiled and executed them to print Hello World on the console.

July 19th, 2017

Building cross-platform C and C++ code is easier than ever with Visual Studio 15.3 Preview 4.  The latest preview improves support for alternative compilers and build environments such as MinGW and Cygwin.  MinGW (Minimalist GNU for Windows), in case you are not familiar with it, is a compiler in the GCC family designed to run natively on Windows.  If you are interested in a quick rundown of this new functionality, check out our latest GoingNative episode on Channel 9.

Most MinGW installations, however, include much more than just a compiler.  Most distributions of MinGW include a whole host of other tools that can be used to build and assemble software on Windows using the familiar GNU toolset.  MinGW build environments often contain an entire POSIX development environment that can be used to develop both native Windows software using POSIX build tools and POSIX software that runs on Windows with the help of an emulation layer.

Please download the preview and try out the latest C++ features.  You will need to also make sure you install the Linux Tools for C++ workload in addition to Desktop C++ to use these new features.  You can learn more about Open Folder on the Microsoft docs site.  We are looking forward to your feedback.

Why MinGW

There are three reasons why you might want to use MinGW on Windows.  The first is simply compiler compatibility.  We all love MSVC, but the reality is that some codebases are designed from the ground up under the expectation that they will be built with GCC.  This is especially true for many cross-platform projects.  Porting these codebases to support MSVC can be a costly endeavor when all you want to do is get up and running with your code.  With MinGW you can be up and running in minutes instead of days.

There is, however, an even more compelling reason to use MinGW than source compatibility with GCC.  MinGW environments are not just a compiler, but include entire POSIX build environments.  These development environments allow cross-platform projects to build on Windows with few if any modifications to their build logic.  Need Make or AutoTools, it’s already installed – if you are using an environment like MSYS2 nearly every tool you might need is only a single package management command away.

Finally, some MinGW distributions such as MSYS2 allow you to build native POSIX software on Windows without porting the code to Win32.  This is accomplished by an emulation layer that allows native POSIX tools to run on Windows.  This same layer is what allows all your favorite POSIX build tools to run in the MinGW environment.

Install MinGW on Windows

Getting started with MinGW is simple once you have installed the latest Visual Studio Preview.  First, you will need to make sure that you select the C++ workload when you install Visual Studio.  Next, you will need to download MinGW itself.  There are actually many ways to install MinGW.  If you are particularly adventurous you can build it from source, but it is much easier to install any of the popular binary distributions.  One of the more popular distributions is MSYS2 (getting started guide).  A standard MSYS2 installation installs three build environments: POSIX build environments to natively target 32-bit and 64-bit Windows, and an emulation layer to build POSIX software that targets Windows.

If you have a particular project in mind that you are working with, it is also worth checking out if they have any project-specific instructions on how to install MinGW.  Some projects even include their own custom tailored MinGW distributions.

Use MinGW with Visual Studio

It has been possible to use GCC based compilers with Visual Studio projects for some time already, but many cross-platform projects that build with MinGW on Windows are not organized into Solution and Visual C++ project files.  Creating these assets for a real-world project can be time consuming.  To streamline onboarding cross-platform projects into Visual Studio, we now support opening folders directly, and in the latest preview it is easier than ever to use alternative compilers and build environments such as MinGW.

With “Open Folder” you can edit your code with full IntelliSense, build, and debug with the same fidelity as is available with full Solution and C++ project files.  However, instead of authoring hundreds of lines of XML you just need to write a small amount of JSON.  Even better, you only need to write the JSON for the features you need.  For instance, if you only want to edit code in the IDE and stick to the command line for everything else, you only need to write a few lines of JSON to enable IntelliSense.

Edit with Accurate IntelliSense

To get the most out of IntelliSense when using “Open Folder” you will need to create a CppProperties.json file.  You can create this file by selecting “Project->Edit Settings->CppProperties.json…” from the main menu.

This file is automatically populated with four configurations: “Debug” and “Release” for the x86 and x64 architectures.  If you don’t need all of these configurations you can remove them to reduce clutter.  Next, you will need to configure a few options to get IntelliSense that is consistent with your MinGW build.

In each configuration, you may notice an “intelliSenseMode” key.  For MinGW and other GCC based compilers you should set this to “windows-clang-x86” or “windows-clang-x64” depending on your architecture.

Next, you will need to add the include paths for your project.  Configuration specific include paths can be added to the “includePath” array under each configuration.  You can add project-wide include paths here as well but it may be easier to add them to the “INCLUDE” environment variable, by adding an “environment” block to your configuration file as a peer to “configurations”:

"environments": [
  {
    "MINGW_PREFIX": "C:/msys64/mingw64",
    "MINGW_CHOST ": "x86_64-w64-mingw32",
    "MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX": "mingw-w64-x86_64",
    "MSYSTEM": "MINGW64",
    "MSYSTEM_CARCH": "x64_64",
    "MSYSTEM_PREFIX": "${env.MINGW_PREFIX}",
    "SHELL": "${env.MINGW_PREFIX}/../usr/bin/bash",
    "TEMP": "${env.MINGW_PREFIX}/../tmp",
    "TMP": "${env.TEMP}",
    "PATH": "${env.MINGW_PREFIX}/bin;${env.MINGW_PREFIX}/../usr/local/bin;${env.MINGW_PREFIX}/../usr/bin;${env.PATH}",
    "INCLUDE": "project/lib/include;${env.MINGW_PREFIX}/mingw/include"
  }
],

Note: MINGW_PREFIX should point to your MinGW installation, if you installed MSYS2 with default settings this directory will be “C:/msys64/mingw64”.

Most GCC based compilers, including MinGW, automatically include certain system header directories.  For full IntelliSense, you will need to add these to the include path list.  You can get a list of these standard includes by running:

echo | gcc -Wp,-v -x c++ - -fsyntax-only

Build with MinGW

Once you have set up IntelliSense (with “MINGW_PREFIX” and its related environment variables defined and added to “PATH”), building with MinGW is quite simple.  First, you will need to create a build task.  Right click your build script (or any other file you would like to associate with the task) and select “Configure Tasks”:

This will create a “tasks.vs.json” file if you don’t already have one and create a stub.  Since MinGW and its tools are already on the PATH, as configured in CppProperties.json, you can configure the task to use them like this:

{
  "version": "0.2.1",
  "tasks": [
    {
      "taskName": "build-all",
      "appliesTo": "hello.cpp",
      "contextType": "build",
      "type": "launch",
      "command": "${env.comspec}",
      "args": [
        "g++ -o helloworld.exe -g hello.cpp"
      ]
    }
  ]
}

This example is simple – it only builds one file – but this can call into Make or any other build tools supported by MinGW as well.  Once you save this file, you should have a “Build” option available for any files matched by the “appliesTo” tag.

Selecting “Build” from the context menu will run the command and stream any console output to the Output Window.

Debug MinGW Applications

Once you have configured your project to build, debugging can be configured with by selecting a template.  Once you have built an executable, find it in the folder view and select “Debug and Launch Settings” from the executable’s context menu in the Solution Explorer:

This will allow you to select a debugger template for this executable:

This will create an entry in the “launch.vs.json” file that configures the debugger:

{
  "version": "0.2.1",
  "defaults": {},
  "configurations": [
    {
      "type": "cppdbg",
      "name": "helloworld.exe",
      "project": "helloworld.exe",
      "cwd": "${workspaceRoot}",
      "program": "${debugInfo.target}",
      "MIMode": "gdb",
      "miDebuggerPath": "${env.MINGW_PREFIX}\bin\gdb.exe",
      "externalConsole": true
    }
  ]
}

In most cases, you won’t have to modify this at all, as long as you defined “MINGW_PREFIX” in the “CppProperties.json” file.  Now you are ready to edit, build, and debug the code.  You can right click the executable and select “Debug” in the context menu or select the newly added launch configuration in the debug dropdown menu to use F5.  You should be able to use breakpoints and other debugging features like the Locals, Watch, and Autos Windows.  If you are having trouble hitting breakpoints, make sure your build command was configured to emit GDB compatible symbols and debugging information.

Finally, to complete the full inner loop, you can add an “output” tag to your build task in “tasks.vs.json”.  For instance:

"output": "${workspaceRoot}\helloworld.exe",

What About Cygwin and Other Compilers in the GCC Family

While we have discussed MinGW specifically in this post, it is worth keeping in mind that very little of the content above is specific to MinGW.  These topics apply equally well to other compilers and build environments so long as they can produce binaries that can be debugged with GDB.  With minimal modification, the instructions under the “Use MinGW with Visual Studio” section above should work fine with other environments such as Cygwin and even other compilers like Clang.  In the future, Open Folder will support an even greater variety of compilers and debuggers – some out of the box, some with a little bit of extra configuration that may be specific to your projects.

Send Us Feedback

To try out the latest and greatest C++ features and give us some early feedback, please download and install the latest Visual Studio 2017 Preview.  As always, we welcome your feedback.  Feel free to send any comments through e-mail at visualcpp@microsoft.com, through Twitter @visualc, or Facebook at Microsoft Visual Cpp.

If you encounter other problems with Visual Studio 2017 please let us know via Report a Problem, which is available in both the installer and the IDE itself.  For suggestions, let us know through UserVoice. We look forward to your feedback!

In this tutorial ,

We will learn How to install 64 bit (GCC) GNU Compiler Collection (Mingw-w64 port) on a Windows 10 system using MSYS2 installer for C/C++ software development.

Content

GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) is an compiler produced by the GNU Project supporting various programming languages like for Objective-C, Objective-C++, Fortran, Ada, D and Go. Here we will be concentrating only C/C++ development on Windows 10.

GCC along with other utilities like  GNU Binutils for Windows (assembler, linker, archive manager),  set of freely distributable Windows specific header files and static import libraries have been ported to Windows platform and is available in the following flavors.

• MinGW —  («Minimalist GNU for Windows») which can be used for creating 32 bit native executable on Windows platform
• Mingw-w64 — 64bit 

Please note that we will not be covering WSL or Windows Subsystem for Linux.

What is Mingw-w64 

Mingw-w64  is a fork off MinGW which provides a more complete Win32 API implementation including Win64 support,C99 support, DDK, DirectX.Mingw-w64 can generate 32 bit and 64-bit executables for x86 under the target names i686-w64-mingw32 and x86_64-w64-mingw32.

Here we will be using Mingw-w64 for C/C++ native application development using Windows API as most modern PC are now 64 bit.

Mingw-w64 Project does not provide any binaries for download from its website instead it maintains a list of Pre-built toolchains and packages provided by other vendors.

These  prebuilt toolchains contains GCC, Debugger ,Package Manager ,Terminals and a set of other Unix tools like curl, openssl, sed, awk etc which can be used for development on Windows Platform. 

Here we will be using a Mingw-w64 package called MSYS2 Software Distribution 

MSYS2 

MSYS2 is a collection of tools and libraries providing the developer with an easy-to-use environment for building, installing and running native Windows software.
MSYS2 Software Distribution consists of 

• command line terminal called mintty, 
• Bash, 
• tools like tar and awk 
• build systems like autotools, 

all based on a modified version of Cygwin. Despite some of these central parts being based on Cygwin, the main focus of MSYS2 is to provide a build environment for native Windows software and the Cygwin-using parts are kept at a minimum.

To install and remove various software packages internally  MSYS2 uses Pacman as their package manager.

MSYS2 is sponsored by Microsoft Open Source Programs Office through their  FOSS Fund.

• Download MSYS2 Software Distribution (Mingw-w64) for Windows
• Download extra MSYS2 Packages from Repo here 

Installing MSYS2 on Windows

Installing MSYS2 on Windows 10 is quite easy. Download the executable using the above link and run it

After the binary is installed on your system ,

MSYS2 comes with different environments/subsystems and the first thing you have to decide is which one to use.

The differences among the environments are mainly environment variables, default compilers/linkers, architecture, system libraries used etc.

If you are unsure, go with UCRT64.

UCRT (Universal C Runtime) is a newer version which is also used by Microsoft Visual Studio by default. 
It should work and behave as if the code was compiled with MSVC.

You can start a terminal .The default terminal is Mintty (above)

Install GCC on Windows using Pacman on Windows 10 

MSYS2 on Windows 10 uses pacman as its package manager.

After installing MSYS2 ,you can check the installed packages by typing

$pacman -Q 

on the Mintty terminal.

This will list all the available packages on your system. 

GCC will not be installed by default, So you can go to the package repo and search for gcc.

You can now use pacman to install gcc

$pacman -S gcc

After which you can check GCC by issuing the whereis command.

$whereis gcc

Compiling C/C++ file on Windows10 using GCC (MingW-w64/MSYS2)

First we will compile a simple c file using gcc.

Code below ,Save as main_c.c

#include<stdio.h>
int main()
{
  printf("Hello World");
  return 0;
}

Compile and run the code using the below commands

$ gcc -o main_c main_c.c
$ ./main_c

Compiling a C++ code using GCC (MingW-w64/MSYS2)

Code below, Save as main_cpp.cpp

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
    cout << "Hello from MSYS2n!";
    cout << "Compiled C++ Filen!";
}

Compile and run the code using the below commands

$ g++ -o main_cpp main_cpp.cpp
$ ./main_cpp

Compiling a Win32/64 API GUI C code using GCC (MingW-w64/MSYS2)

Now we will compile a Win32/64 GUI application using GCC (MingW-w64/MSYS2) on Windows 10 .

We will create a Window and a Message Box using Win32 native api and configure the gcc to compile and link to the native system API.

Copy the below code and save it as win.c 

#include<Windows.h>

int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance,     //the instance of the program        
                      HINSTANCE hPrevInstance, //the previous instance 
                   LPSTR lpCmdLine,         //ptr to command line args
                   int nCmdShow)            //display properties
{
    HWND h;     
    h = CreateWindow("BUTTON",
                        "Hit me",
                        WS_OVERLAPPEDWINDOW,
                        350,300,250,100,0,0,
                         hInstance,0); //Create a window with BUTTON class
     
    ShowWindow(h,nCmdShow);   //show the window                                                
     MessageBox(0,"Press Me","Waiting",MB_OK); //used to display window                                                 
}

You can compile the Win32 API code on GCC using the following command

$ gcc -o win  win.c -Wl,--subsystem,windows  -lgdi32

$ ./win

Here

• The -Wl,—subsystem,windows linker switch ensures that the application is built as a Windows GUI application, and not a console application. Failing to do so would result in a console window being displayed whilst your application runs

• You should link with the gdi32 library using «—lgdi32 » otherwise the code will complain about «undefined reference to GetStockObject«.

Содержание:

1. Установка и настройка тулчейна MinGW/MSYS и дополнительного ПО

Давайте разберемся, что такое MinGW, а что такое MSYS и для чего они нужны.

• Порт GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), который включает в себя компиляторы таких языков, как: C, C++, ADA и Fortran.
• Порт GNU Binutils для Windows (as, ld, ar)
• Консольный установщик (mingw-get) для MinGW и MSYS
• Графический установщик (mingw-get-inst)

MSYS – сокращение от “Minimal SYStem”, это порт командной оболочки Bourne Shell (sh) для Windows. Он предлагается в качестве альтернативы “cmd.exe” от Microsoft’а. Оболочка хорошо подходит для портирования существующих приложений и библиотек, которые есть в *nix системах и включает в себя небольшой выбор портов инструментов Unix, облегчающих задачу портирования.

<< Перейти к содержанию

1.1. Устанавливаем MinGW, оболочку MSYS и настраиваем окружение

Жмем “Next” и соглашаемся с лицензией, снова “Next”, и теперь выбираем путь для установки:

Рекомендуется выбирать путь без пробелов, лучше всего устанавливать MinGW в корень диска, т.е в “C:MinGW”. Я выбрал “C:QtMinGW”, так удобнее будет подключить MinGW к IDE QtCreator. Если вы планируете дальше интегрировать свой тулчейн в какую-нибуть IDE, сделайте аналогично и нажмите “Next”. Необходимость наличия группы ярлыков в меню “Пуск” – по вашему желанию. Но можно не создавать (отметив галочкой “Don’t create a Start Menu folder) и нажать “Next”.

Выбираем следующие пакеты:

• C Compiler
• C++ Compiler
• MSYS Basic System
• MinGW Developer ToolKit

и жмем “Next”

mingw-get install msys-man
mingw-get install msys-wget
mingw-get install msys-zip
mingw-get install msys-unzip
mingw-get install msys-bzip2
mingw-get install msys-perl

mingw-get show | grep "Package: "

<< Перейти к содержанию

1.2. Настройка MinGW/MSYS: используем продвинутую консоль, вместо msys.bat

Возможно многим разработчикам стандартный шел, вызываемый по “msys.bat” покажется унылым и скучным:

<< Перейти к содержанию

1.3. Компиляция и установка утилиты pkg-config

export CFLAGS="-march=native"
cd /c/Qt/build/pkg-config-0.28
./configure --with-internal-glib --prefix=/mingw
make
make install
export -n CFLAGS

cat > /mingw/bin/pkg-config.sh << "EOF"
#!/bin/sh
if pkg-config "$@" > /dev/null 2>&1 ; then
res=true
else
res=false
fi
pkg-config "$@" | tr -d \r && $res

EOF

chmod ugo+x /mingw/bin/pkg-config.sh && 
echo "PKG_CONFIG=/mingw/bin/pkg-config.sh" >> /etc/profile.local && 
echo "export PKG_CONFIG" >> /etc/profile.local

1.3.6. Когда вам понадобится альтернативное окружение, вы всегда можете подгрузить его командой:

source /etc/profile.local

<< Перейти к содержанию

1.4. Установка CMake, примеры использования

• Обычные Makefile, которые используются в системах Unix для сборки с помощью утилиты make;
• Файлы projects/workspaces (*.dsp/*.dsw) в системах Windows для сборки с помощью Microsoft Visual C++;
• Проекты XCode в Mac OS X.

1.4.1.5. При желании можно создать группу ярлыков в меню “Пуск”. Щелкаем “Установить”, ждем окончания установки и нажимаем “Готово”. Всё! CMake установлен.

project(GLUT-Req)
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8)
aux_source_directory(. SRC_LIST)

set(CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH ${CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH} "C:/Qt/MinGW/lib")
set(CMAKE_INCLUDE_PATH ${CMAKE_INCLUDE_PATH} "C:/Qt/MinGW/include/GL;C:/Qt/MinGW/include")

##########################################################
find_package(OpenGL REQUIRED)
if(NOT OPENGL_FOUND)
    message(SEND_ERROR "Failed to find OpenGL")
    return()
else()
    include_directories(${OPENGL_INCLUDE_DIR})
endif()
##########################################################
find_package(GLUT REQUIRED)
if(NOT GLUT_FOUND)
    message(SEND_ERROR "Failed to find GLUT")
    return()
else()
    include_directories(${GLUT_INCLUDE_DIR})
endif()
##########################################################

link_libraries(${OPENGL_LIBRARY} ${GLUT_LIBRARIES})
add_executable(${PROJECT_NAME} ${SRC_LIST})

cmake -G "MSYS Makefiles"
make
make install

И в итоге получаем исполнительный файл “GLUT-Req.exe”. Обратите внимание на:

set(CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH ${CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH} "C:/Qt/MinGW/lib")
set(CMAKE_INCLUDE_PATH ${CMAKE_INCLUDE_PATH} "C:/Qt/MinGW/include/GL;C:/Qt/MinGW/include")

cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH="/mingw" -DCMAKE_C_FLAGS:STRING="-march=i686" -DCMAKE_CPP_FLAGS:STRING="" -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS:STRING="" 
-DCMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS:STRING="-L/usr/local/lib -L/opt/local/lib" -DCMAKE_MODULE_LINKER_FLAGS:STRING="-L/usr/local/lib -L/opt/local/lib" 
-DCMAKE_SHARED_LINKER_FLAGS:STRING="-L/usr/local/lib -L/opt/local/lib" -G "MSYS Makefiles"

Из названий переменных все должно быть понятно:

-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH #- путь, куда будет устанавливаться программа после "make install".
-DCMAKE_C_FLAGS:STRING #- Установка флагов для файлов "*.c"
-DCMAKE_CPP_FLAGS:STRING / -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS:STRING #- Установка флагов для файлов "*.cpp" и "*.cxx" соответственно.
-DCMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS:STRING / -DCMAKE_MODULE_LINKER_FLAGS:STRING / -DCMAKE_SHARED_LINKER_FLAGS:STRING #- Установка файлов линковки.

Каталог с исходниками можно оставить в чистом состоянии. Для этого следует перейти в сборочный каталог (в данном случае “build_project”) и разверенуть в него дерево исходного кода с последующей генерацией Makefile’ов. Пример:

cd build_project/
cmake -G "MSYS Makefiles" --build ../project/src/

В аргумент “build” необходимо прописать путь до каталога с исходным кодом, который нужно оставить чистым. После выполнения команды в каталоге “build_project/” создастся полная копия дерева проекта и в этом каталоге можно будет выполнять дальнейшую сборку.

# this one is important
SET(CMAKE_SYSTEM_NAME Linux)
#this one not so much
SET(CMAKE_SYSTEM_VERSION 1)

# specify the cross compiler
SET(CMAKE_C_COMPILER   /opt/eldk-2007-01-19/usr/bin/ppc_74xx-gcc)
SET(CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER /opt/eldk-2007-01-19/usr/bin/ppc_74xx-g++)

# where is the target environment 
SET(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH  /opt/eldk-2007-01-19/ppc_74xx /home/alex/eldk-ppc74xx-inst)

# search for programs in the build host directories
SET(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH_MODE_PROGRAM NEVER)
# for libraries and headers in the target directories
SET(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH_MODE_LIBRARY ONLY)
SET(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH_MODE_INCLUDE ONLY)

И конфигурируем проект:

cmake -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=Toolchain-eldk-ppc74xx.cmake

Если переменная “CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH_MODE_PROGRAM” установлена в NEVER, то будут использоваться инструменты из недр вашей системы. Если она установлена в ONLY, то будут использованы инструменты из каталога “CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH/bin”. В этом случае следует быть осторожным, так как из поля видимости CMake пропадают некоторые кросс-утилиты из состава binutils, например tuple-ar и tuple-ranlib. Решить эту поблему можно с помощью создания симлинков на эти инструменты. Симлинки следует расположить в директорию “CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH/bin”. В противном случае, при сборке проекта может возникать следующая ошибка:

Error running link command: No such file or directory

Подробнее можно прочесть тут: CMake Cross Compiling

1. CMake Documentation [ENG]
2. Введение в CMake [RUS]
3. Используем Cmake для создания Makefile [RUS]

<< Перейти к содержанию

http://exlmoto.ru/mingw-development-environment/
http://www.linux.org.ru/forum/desktop/10819573
https://msys2.github.io/