MinGW .exe requires a few gcc dll's regardless of the code?

Question

When compiling with MinGW, I have to copy over certain dll files from the MinGW bin directory before the exe will run (Even when using "-static" and/or "-static-libstdc++".) How do I change that? Is there a special build of MinGW that I have to use? Ultimately I want to be able to run the program with nothing but the exe in the directory (and no windows environment variables set.) These File's are:

• libstdc++-6.dll
• libgcc_s_seh-1.dll
• libwinpthread-1.dll

And here is the complete list of step's I fallow:

1. Open Up Code::Blocks
2. Select "File->New->Project->Console"
3. Fill out the project settings for project "Hello World"
4. Right click Project->Build Options...->Hello World (Root target)->Other Options
5. Enter "-static" (or "-static-libstdc++") under the already set "-fexceptions"
6. CTRL-F9 : Build Project (Without executing)
7. Navigate to, in Windows Explorer, and run the built "Hello World.exe" file.
8. Click "OK" when a message pop's up saying "Error: libstdc++-6.dll is missing from your computer."
9. Copy "libstdc++-6.dll" from the /MinGW/bin/ directory, into the "Hello World.exe" directory.
10. Run "Hello World.exe"
11. Click "OK" for the message saying "Error: libgcc_s_seh-1.dll is missing from your computer."
12. Copy "libgcc_s_seh-1.dll" into the "Hello World.exe" directory.
13. Repeat and end up copying "libwinpthread-1.dll" over aswell.

14. View the message

    Hello World!
    

Edit: My command line is:

g++.exe -Wall -fexceptions -static -static-libgcc -static-libstdc++ -g -static-libgcc -static-libstdc++ -L. -c "C:\Users\______\Desktop\Hello World\main.cpp" -o obj\Debug\main.o
g++.exe -o "bin\Debug\Hello World.exe" obj\Debug\main.o

With all the dll files mentioned above required. And, just to be safe, the code is:

// main.cpp
#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
    cout << "Hello world!" << endl;
    return 0;
}

Answer 1

Your commands are wrong !

Go to the directory where your main.cpp file is, and try the following.

g++.exe -Wall -c -g main.cpp -o obj\Debug\main.o
g++.exe -static -static-libgcc -static-libstdc++ -o "bin\Debug\Hello World.exe" obj\Debug\main.o

then you'll no longer need to copy the DLLs (for your Hello World program).

Other notes:

The MinGW installation instructions recommends setting

c:\minGW;c:\MinGW\bin;

to the PATH environment variable.

Normally the

-static -static-libgcc -static-libstdc++

linker options should work (try all 3 of them at once). But not for libwinpthread-1.dll.

Also, try to clean before recompiling.

There's no "-static-something" command.

Only standard libraries libgcc and libstdc++ can be set to static linking.

For other libraries, you first switch to static linking with "-static" and then list the libraries to include with separate commands, i.e. "-lpthread".

Cmake users should try adding:

set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD_LIBRARIES "-static-libgcc -static-libstdc++ -lwsock32 -lws2_32 ${CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD_LIBRARIES}")

set(CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS "${CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS} -Wl,-Bstatic,--whole-archive -lwinpthread -Wl,--no-whole-archive")

Answer 2

-static-libgcc may be a bad idea if exceptions are used. link options documentation states that

There are several situations in which an application should use the shared libgcc instead of the static version. The most common of these is when the application wishes to throw and catch exceptions across different shared libraries. In that case, each of the libraries as well as the application itself should use the shared libgcc.

Answer 3

The comments to the answer above contain the full solution, so I would like to merely add the CodeBlocks perspective. I verified it on Windows7 x64 with CodeBlocks16 and MinGW-W64 8.1.0 ''i686-posix-dwarf''.

This solves the OPs question

• Create new project and name it "Hello World"

• accept all defaults in the wizard

• select Project/BuildOptions/ and select "Hello World". Out edits will be valid for both Debug and Release

• add the following at "Other linker option" in the "Linker" Tab

  -static
  -static-libgcc
  -static-strc++
  -lwinpthread
  

• On the Toolbar select "Debug" and press Build (the yellow gear icon)

• Press the green run icon and confirm that the build was ok

Testing

• open a terminal window and go to the HelloWorld\bin\debug folder
• start hello world there.
• Confirm it works without asking for any DLLs.

You could also start it from an explorer window and confirm that it also does not ask for DLLs.

Note: On my Win7x64 system when starting the HelloWorld.exe from the explorer adding the "-lwinpthread" line causes CodeBlocks to ignore the setting in "Projects/Properties/Tab_BuildTargets/ "Pause when execution ends". So the "Hello World" output is hardly visible because the window immediately closes after execution (mabye someone knows why)

Note that if you do not have the winpthread.dll not found problem of the OP then you likely do not use a MinGW-W64 compiler with a 'posix' thread model. Both Code blocks MinGW-W64-bundled install packages use such versions. For CB20.03 the relevant downloads from MinGW-W64 download page would be

• 32bit: 8.1.0 ''i686-posix-dwarf''
• 64bit: 8.1.0 ''x86_64-posix-seh''

For example if I set setup compilers with Codeblocks direcly and chose the 32-bit compiler package ''i686-win32-dwarf'', only the first 2 DLLs would go missing. In that case the fix is to set the linker options only to

  -static-libgcc
  -static-strc++