Recent news about MinGW (gcc compiler for Windows)

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Alessandro Furieri

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Jun 15, 2017, 5:01:46 AM6/15/17
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Hi List,

I was pleasantly surprised by discovering that the latest version
of MinGW-w64 (6.3.0) marks very noticeable progresses in many areas:

1. we finally have a single distribution supporting both 32 bit and
   64 bit compilers (mingw32 and mingw64), and this obviously helps
   in achieving a simpler and safer code portability.
   
2. MinGW-w64 now supports an excellent integration with Windows
   native runtime components. Now many FLOSS packages directly
   build by just applying their standard configuration scripts;
   just a handful of them still require applying some manual
   patch, and the output binary code is always stable and affordable.
   this is a noticeable progress in respect to all previous versions.   
   
3. installing and configuring MinGW is never been easier than now;
   you just have to install the new MSYS2 shell, and then you can
   easily install or update all required tools and libraries by just
   calling the standard "pacman" package manager, exactly in same
   way that you call "yum" or "apt-get" on Linux.
   
4. last but not least, the executable code generated by MinGW-w64
   6.3.0  (in both 32 and 64 bit versions) slightly outperforms the
   equivalent binary code generated by the proprietary MSVC compiler.
   
You can read the updated "how-to" guides at the following URLs:

building 32 bit executables for Windows:

building 64 bit executables for Windows:

The results of a comparative benchmark objectively documenting
the excellent code optimization of binary executables
created by MinGW 3.6.0 is published here:


enjoy,
Sandro
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