Re: [Mingw-users] What's the relationship between GCC and MinGW

[Charles W. <cwi...@us...>]

On 1/26/2011 10:31 PM, JonY wrote:
> On 1/27/2011 11:02, Xiaobo Gu wrote:
>> MSYS does not provide GCC, it only provides some UNIX like tools on
>> Windows to emulate the *NIX environment.
> 
> 
> Yes it does, you are using it.

Right.  Here's the story:

MSYS, as normally used by end users like Xiaobo Gu, only provides
unix-like tools to emulate the *NIX environment, as he says.  However,
those tools have to be compiled somehow, right?  So, there IS an MSYS
gcc -- that's what we use to create the MSYS tools.

Since this is open source, we don't hide that compiler -- anybody can
install it by selecting "mingw-get install msys-system-builder" (or
"mingw-get install msys-gcc msys-g++" but then you'd be missing some
other bits).

However, MOST of our end users should NOT install the
msys-system-builder or the msys-gcc packages -- because MOST end users
don't want to build msys apps; they want to build MinGW ones.

So, instead, they should install the mingw gcc (which is always
installed, by mingw-get, as currently distributed).

(FWIW, you can install the "regular" (non msys-system-builder) msys
stuff and use it with the mingw64 project's gcc if you like)

--
Chuck