Mingw

Mingw is a "minimalist" port of GNU tools for Windows. Mingw differs from Cygwin because Cygwin programs require (by default) special DLLs to run, and mingw programs do not. The Cygwin environment is generally more like using Linux and the Mingw tools work better with a Windows DOS Prompt or command prompt.

• Get the Native Mingw compiler for Windows from SDL
• Unzip this file in the top level directory of your main hard drive ("C:\" for example) - this will create a "bin" directory (containing sh.exe, used by some Unix-style scripts) and a "gcc-2.95.2" directory (containing various Mingw tools, headers and libraries)
• To install mingw packages:
  • Go to the Mingw Packages Repository project at SourceForge
  • Download a zipped package
  • The zip file should contain a similar directory structure to the gcc-2.95.2 directory
  • Unzip the package in the gcc-2.95.2 directory
• To use Mingw from a DOS Prompt
  • Create a new text document
  • Give the file a name ending with ".bat" (i.e. "mingw.bat")
  • Paste these commands in the text file

    PATH c:\gcc-2.95.2\bin;%PATH%
    command.com
    

  • Adapt these settings to your system (Windows NT/2000 users may be able to use cmd.exe instead of command.exe)
  • Double-click this batch file to open a command prompt