[Mingw-users] Instructions for Installing Msys and MinGW

[Rich B. <rba...@en...>]

Hi Chris,

I feel your pain with getting started with msys/mingw.  Here are some
instructions that worked for me.

Cheers,  Rich.

#Start Instructions
Installing MinGW and Msys in Windows XP SP3.

1.0 Before starting download and install Metapad from
http://liquidninja.com/metapad/, use this program to replace Windows
Notepad, because Metapad will read and display unix/linux style text files
in Windows as if they were notepad files.

2.0 Download from sourceforge the current automated mingw installer,
(5.1.4), and the current release of 'MSYS Base System', MSYS-1.0.10.  Store
the files into a directory, such as c:\temp.
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2435

2. 1  Run the mingw installer first.

For type of install, select 'full', this will install all compilers and
tools

Use the default destination folder, c:\mingw

The installer will download the required files into c:\temp and extract them
into c:\mingw.

Partial list of items extracted:  mingw-runtime, w32api, binutils,
mingw32-make, gcc-core, gcc-g++, gcc-g77, gcc-objc.

2.2  Run the MSYS-1.0.10.exe installer second.

By default it will install Msys for i386 (Windows) into c:\msys\1.0

Answer the post install questions, mostly yes.

Afterwards, delete the downloaded files from c:\temp.
#End of instructions.

-----Original Message-----
From: min...@li...
[mailto:min...@li...] On Behalf Of
min...@li...
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2008 7:43 AM
To: min...@li...
Subject: MinGW-users Digest, Vol 26, Issue 12
Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Suggest two patches (zou guangxian)
   2. Re: mingw sub-project idea (Christopher Harvey)
   3. Re: [Newbie] help needed getting started (Cristi)
   4. MSYS installation and documentation (Chris Wilson)
   5. Re: mingw sub-project idea (Earnie Boyd)
   6. Re: mingw sub-project idea (Earnie Boyd)
   7. Re: MSYS installation and documentation (Vincent Torri)

Message: 4
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:25:26 +0100 (BST)
From: Chris Wilson <ch...@qw...>
Subject: [Mingw-users] MSYS installation and documentation
To: MinGW Users <min...@li...>
Message-ID: <Pin...@to...>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Hi all,

I have been using MinGW for many years and I'm very happy that it exists 
and very grateful for all your work. Thank you.

Now I would like to try MSYS in order to port some software that currently 
runs on Linux to Windows. I found the process so confusing that I have 
given up. I hope that you will take the following as constructive 
criticism rather than a random rant. If you prefer to take offence at my 
message, please delete it now, thank you. I am happy to update the wiki(s) 
once I have the necessary information and if I have permission to do so.

So I knew that MSYS was a MinGW project and visited mingw.org to try to 
download it. I find the mingw.org front page difficult to navigate. The 
"Navigation Links" are not useful to me. I would find a set of links more 
like a standard project (about us, news, downloads, support, screenshots, 
etc.) much easier to use. "New MinGWiki" and "Old MinGWiki" mean nothing 
to me. I don't care who's online, not what documents were "last viewed" by 
some random user. 

Since I cannot find a "Download" link anywhere, I try MSYS, which takes me 
to "http://www.mingw.org/node/18". Again I cannot see any link to download 
anything here. "Getting Started" says nothing about MSYS. HOWTO links to 
this page on the old wiki: 
http://www.mingw.org/MinGWiki/index.php/MSYSBuildEnvironment.

That page is most definitely not easy to follow. Perhaps the only useful 
line is "So the first exciting thing is to install the 
msysDVLPR-1.0.0-alpha-1.tar.gz file unarchiving it into the /msys 
directory." This contradicts other information that I have read online, 
more on that in a minute. Also, that file dates back to 2003 on 
Sourceforge. 

Frustrated, I try googling for "Installing MSYS". The only official page I 
can find, and the first link on Google, is this one: 
http://www.mingw.org/MinGWiki/index.php/Install%20MSYS. This is also from 
the old wiki. It says "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." I cannot find that Win32 
installer anywhere. I don't even know what it's name is. It contradicts 
the previous instructions which say I have to download and extract a 
tarball.

The page also says "Choose the version of the package you want; Snapshot, 
Candidate or Current;" but those links don't take me to download files, 
nor to Sourceforge FRS, nor to a page which contains a link to either of 
these. The only way I have found to actually download anything is via the 
front page of the website, right hand side, "Recent File Releases".

The MinGW page (http://www.mingw.org/node/19) needs reformatting for the 
changed wiki syntax. Many links are broken (e.g. [history project 
history]) and bad formatting makes others difficult to read (e.g. !Links 
How to install MinGW How to get started with MinGW Building a Linux hosted 
Windows compiler Building a Windows hosted cross-compiler When will the 
next release be supported?). Still no link to sourceforge.

Going back to the front page, I spy a link to "Updated: MinGW Automated 
Installer 5.1.4". This looks promising so I click on it. Finally I get to 
Sourceforget. I click "Downloads" and "Browse all files". There are a 
million different subprojects in MinGW. I find this very confusing. I have 
not much idea what I need to download. But I do see three projects 
starting with the word MSYS, and this reminds me of the MSYS installer 
comments above, so I investigate them.

The first is "MSYS Base System: Technology Preview: MSYS-1.0.11". It is 
also the most recent. However, clicking the Download link gives me another 
huge raft of files, none of which I know if I need or not. I do not relish 
the prospect of downloading them all one by one from sourceforge. I would 
be here all day.

MSYS-1.0.11-20071204.tar.bz2 looks the most promising, but it's a tar.bz2 
not an installer, and I don't even know if I have a bunzip2 or tar on this 
system, and don't want to damage the archives by unpacking them with 
winzip. Also there is a msysCORE-1.0.11-2007.01.19-1.tar.bz2. How this is 
different to the previous file, I have no idea.

The MSYS Supplementary Tools has no msys* files whatsoever. MSYS System 
Builder contains the msysDVLPR-1.0.0-alpha-1.tar.gz referred to above, but 
it's five years old, and again I suspect I will have problems with 
unpacking the tarball with winzip.

I have not found an easy way to install MSYS. I give up.

I'd like to make the following requests for changes to the website:

* Please provide the standard links in your Navigation menu
* Please provide download documentation for MSYS.
* Please link to the promised holy grail "MSYS installer" if it exists
* Please create one if it does not
* Please do not expect people like me to navigate your massive file 
  structure on Sourceforge to download anything; or
* Please make the structure 100x simpler if you do. e.g. two projects, 
  MinGW and MSYS; one file under each, which is the latest automated 
  installer; hide everything else.

Thank you for listening to my rant. I'm glad to get it off my chest. I 
hope that this situation can be improved and that I can help in some way 
to do so. Otherwise I'm afraid that MSYS, however good it is, will remain 
far out of reach for people who simply want tools that work. Now I'm going 
to download cygwin. Which is absolutely trivial by comparison.

Cheers, Chris.
-- 
_____ __     _
\  __/ / ,__(_)_  | Chris Wilson <0000 at qwirx.com> - Cambs UK |
/ (_/ ,\/ _/ /_ \ | Security/C/C++/Java/Ruby/Perl/SQL Developer |
\ _/_/_/_//_/___/ | We are GNU : free your mind & your software |



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