So I decided to install a c++ compiler for Windows and thus downloaded the MinGW installer. Once I opened it, I saw a number of packages and checked all the "C++ compiler" packages (am I using the right terminology here?) for installation. I also saw other stuff like "mingw32-base" and all. What does this do? Should I install it? Also, what is the difference between mingw and mingw32?
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Recent "what's the difference" question - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25582110/what-is-the-difference-between-mingw-mingw-w64-and-mingw-builds – parktomatomi Jan 28 '22 at 14:44
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Personally, mingw used to be the only good free option on Windows, but not anymore. I'd recommend using Visual Studio's community version for a good standards-compliant IDE + compiler. You can also install clang for windows with choco or with Visual Studio. If you _really_ want to use gcc on Windows, I think using WSL + cross compilation is easier than using msys + mingw. – parktomatomi Jan 28 '22 at 14:46
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***Should I install it?*** No. My advice is to switch to use msys2 to provide your minGW instead of the outdated minGW binaries. [https://www.msys2.org/](https://www.msys2.org/) also [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30069830/how-to-install-mingw-w64-and-msys2](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30069830/how-to-install-mingw-w64-and-msys2) msys2 provides a version of mingw with gcc-11.2 and a builtin package management which makes it much simpler to install opensource libraries. – drescherjm Jan 28 '22 at 14:56
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If you don't need additional packages you shouldn't install them.
But MinGW is a bit outdated. It's better to switch to MinGW-w64, which exists for both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows.
You can get MinGW-w64 either by installing MSYS2 and installing via its package manager (pacman), or - if you don't need the additional MSYS2 shell and just want to compiler tools - you can get a standalone package from https://winlibs.com/ and just unzip it.
Brecht Sanders
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