Create a free software in Windows: mingw

Mingw refers to the compiling environment that only uses free software to generate pure Win32 executable files. It is Minimalist GNU on Windows. For more information, see

Here "pure" refers to "applications using msvcrt. dll 」. Microsoft Foundation Classes cannot be used ).

Mingw: a collection of freely available and freely distributable windows specific header files and import libraries combined with GNU toolsets that allow one to produce Native Windows programs that do not rely on any 3rd-party C Runtime DLLs.

Mingw, that is, minimalist GNU for Windows. It is a collection of header files and port libraries that allow people to use GCC (GNU Compiler C) to generate windows32 programs without a third-party dynamic link library.
In the basic layer, mingw is a group of files and port libraries. Its function is to allow console-mode programs to use Microsoft's Standard C Runtime Library (msvcrt. DLL), the Library is valid on all nt OS, effective on all Windows OS Versions later than Windows 95, use the basic running time, you can use the GCC write Console mode to conform to the American Organization for Standardization (ANSI) program, and use the C Runtime extension provided by Microsoft. This function is not available for Windows 32 APIs. The next component is the w32api package, which is a group of files and port libraries that can use windows32 APIs. Combined with the basic running time, you can have full rights to use both CRT (C Runtime) and windows32 API functions.

Mingw official website for http://www.mingw.org
In fact, mingw is not a C/C ++ compiler, but a set of GNU tools. Apart from GCC (GNU Compiler set), mingw also contains some other gnu program development tools (such as gawk bison ).
Mingw is developed to provide a GNU working environment for those who do not like to work in the Linux (FreeBSD) operating system and stay in Windows (such as me.
(Although the previous cygwin is also a GNU Windows Port, cygwin is copyrighted, not GNU .)
Therefore, with mingw, we can use the GNU program development tool as in Linux.

GCC is the core of mingw. GCC is a compilation system that supports many computer programming languages, and is the closest to the standard in terms of implementation of language standards. In addition, GCC can be transplanted to almost all currently available computer platforms. (Devkitpro is also installed on my computer, which contains the GCC arm (for GBA/DS/gp32) and MIPS (for PSP) versions .)
GCC itself does not have the IDE interface as VC does (in Windows There are also Dev C ++ and other ides that support mingw compiler ). You can select any text editor you like to edit the source code (it is said that Microsoft developers, including VC, do not use the IDE editor provided by VC, but choose the GNU Vim editor ). Then, use make and other tools to compile, Link, package, and publish software projects. Source code version control tools like CVS (SVN) allow anyone in any corner of the world to participate in software projects.

For the MFC and Microsoft basic library classes, this open source code development kit with VC ++ is the same as other Windows Development kits. If you have VC ++ authorization, you can use the source code of MFC, that is, you can use GCC to compile the MFC program.
Of course, there are also many windows Development kits under GNU, and some of them support cross-platform use. You can not only directly compile the source code into a Windows program, but also compile it into a graphical program of other operating systems without modification.
However, the most popular GUI development library under GNU is GTK +. GTK + can also run well on Windows platforms (such as Gimp and GAIM ).
In general, using mingw is GNU.