MinGW - Minimalist GNU for Windows Reviews

The only easy and intuitive to install GNU compiler collection for Windows

It gets the job done for university projects

This is out of date, and the tutorials available on the internet are so conflicting. Manually renaming files, an installation for windows where the messages ask us to enter a windows folder using the Unix slash (/), then the folder is not found even though it exists, a total mess. Broken links in perhaps official pages, total confusion and installation nightmare, perhaps due to a not well maintained project. I'm doing all this cause I want to have the GMP libraries on my computer, but oh boy, program installations are supposed to be fully automated and simple.

It gets the job done but they took the minimalism a little bit too serious.

I'm struggling to uninstall the "MinGW Installer" from Windows 10. The app is not listed in apps and features as well I cannot find any uninstall.exe in the installation folder. I could not find this information anywhere or any other contact possibilities besides this. Please provide support!

Little intuitive, and entangling. To obtain an earlier version you have to do it very manually.

Very good for people who needs to use Linux's tools in Windows. It helps me soo much...

I agree, some files are outdated, especially gcc. But in most cases it is not a problem. MinGW brings you the unique possibility to use bash scripts natively in Windows. Also gcc alows you to build native Windows apps in the well known unix environment. Also I do often use find command inside MinGW terminal to search Windows files on the whole disk in a UNIX manner.

I don't recommend using it. This is using very outdated files. Uses version 6xx GNU compiler and the latest is 8xx. It only installs 32bit , not 64bit :( It ran G++ OK on my Win7 Pro but would not compile newer software libraries.

"make" is outdated. scripting failed. process_begin: CreateProcess(NULL, printf " GENHDR include/libopencm3/lm3s/irq.json\n;", ...) failed.

It takes a while to learn how to install the packages.

Ok, so... The installer for the mingw manager isn't working right. It's having some trouble downloading from the sourceforge servers, there's something wrong with either the sourceforge servers or the files uploaded there. Actual review: It's a pretty good compiler, I use it because my college uses it. SO yeah. It's consistent and reliable. If you install it correctly. But sometimes that's not a decision you get to make.

It won't download files from installer! Fails at downloading and I've tried over 5 possible solutions, hardest thing to install I've ever seen!

Nice.

Nice.

Awesome.

I am using MinGW as a build environment for certain programs. So far this one is the best for compiling 32-bit binaries in Windows.

I think many of the 1 star ratings ("Unusable!!!") are just dense people. This has worked for me for years without any problems at all. Does exactly what it's supposed to.

Installer is crashing quite often. There is some potential in development, but stability of like pre-alpha product.

The MinGW project doesn't seem to be well maintained. At the time of writing (2015), the package manager only seems to only have about 6 packages and all of them are from 2013. At this point in time, it is generally better to use MSYS2. Also, I agree that the installer is bad. The UI for the installer is trying to incorporate checkboxes and radio buttons into some big sentence/paragraph, which is weird. A good UI should try as much as possible to stick to elements that people are familiar with and understand. (If you are MinGW developer, this is not intended as a personal jab at you. You have no obligation to maintain this project and you don't owe the community anything. The work you did on this project was useful.)

Worst installer for anything ever.

"All of MinGW's software will execute on the 64bit Windows platforms" - so does it include 32 or 64 bit compilers?

The installer is so bad I can't be sure it even installed everything correctly. It definitely did not remove the program.

Before using the installer, disable your firewall.

Everything is ok, but the installer can be better.