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Development Tasks / FAQ for MinGW

The MinGW environment is intended as a self-contained developer environment for C, Fortran, and other languages. It is not intended as an operational environment (Cygwin is recommended for that). MinGW is installed with a number of Unix/Linux system tools to facilitate development work, referred to as MSYS.

Answers to the following questions are provided in this documentation:

How do I access MSYS/MinGW programs from the Windows Command Shell?

Previous versions of MinGW required configuring a Windows command shell. However, the latest MSYS/MinGW environment (see Development Environment/Machine) provides command shells in the Start / MSYS2 64bit menu. Software that is installed using these command shells and MSYS2 installation commands will be available in the shell windows without additional configuration.

Other Windows programs are also available if in the PATH.

How do I access MSYS/MinGW programs from the Windows Command Shell (old 32-bit instructions)?

As part of the MinGW setup, it is recommended that a batch file is created to set environment variables, in particular the PATH, in order to find MinGW and MSYS software executables. A default script is available in the repository: ~/cdss-dev/StateCU/git-repos/cdss-app-statecu-fortran/build-util/mingw/setup-mingw-env.bat. If this script is run, then opening a Windows Command Shell should show the modified path:

>echo %PATH%

C:\MinGW\bin;C:\MinGW\MSYS\1.0\local\bin;C:\MinGW\MSYS\1.0\bin;C:\Program Files\Python35\Scripts\;C:\Program Files\Python35\;C:\Program Files (x86)\Intel\iCLS Client\;C:\Program Files\Intel\iCLS Client\;C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem;C:\WINDOWS\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\Program Files (x86)\Intel\Intel(R) Management Engine Components\DAL;C:\Program Files\Intel\Intel(R) Management Engine Components\DAL;C:\Program Files (x86)\Intel\Intel(R) Management Engine Components\IPT;C:\Program Files\Intel\Intel(R) Management Engine Components\IPT;c:\Program Files (x86)\ATI Technologies\ATI.ACE\Core-Static;C:\Program Files\Intel\WiFi\bin\;C:\Program Files\Common Files\Intel\WirelessCommon\;C:\Users\sam\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps

Then programs like make and gfortran can be run from the Windows command line.