Latest revision as of 14:56, 2 April 2026

MinGW is a free and open source Windows port of the GCC compiler and related tools. Qt supports MinGW as a platform on Windows (in addition to the Visual Studio compiler by Microsoft). However, it can also be used as a cross-compiler e.g. on Unix (currently not officially supported).

Qt Creator supports compiling with a MinGW toolchain out of the box.

MinGW distributions and versions

There are actually different MinGW toolchains and packages available:

MinGW is the original project. It only compiles for 32-bit binaries.
MinGW-w64 is a fork with the original which also supports generation of 64-bit binaries. By now it also supports a much larger part of the Win32 API. The MinGW-w64 project does host several different binary packages, done by different people.

There are binary installers targeting MinGW for both Qt 4 and Qt 5. Up to Qt 4.8.6, Qt 4 ones are built with a MinGW toolchain using GCC 4.4. Newer Qt 4.8 binary packages ship with a MinGW-w64 based toolchain. For Qt 5, original MinGW toolchains are no longer supported.

Toolchains used in Qt binary packages

Qt version	MinGW toolchain
Qt 4.8.6, Qt 4.8.7	mingw-builds i686-4.8.2-release-posix-dwarf-rt_v3-rev3
Qt 5.0	mingw-builds x32-4.7.2-release-posix-sjlj-rev8
Qt 5.1	mingw-builds x32-4.8.0-release-posix-dwarf-rev2
Qt 5.2, Qt 5.3	mingw-builds i686-4.8.2-release-posix-dwarf-rt_v3-rev3
Qt 5.4	mingw-builds i686-4.9.1-release-posix-dwarf-rt_v3-rev2
Qt 5.5, Qt 5.6	mingw-builds i686-4.9.2-release-posix-dwarf-rt_v3-rev1
Qt 5.7, Qt 5.9, Qt 5.10, Qt 5.11	mingw-builds i686-5.3.0-release-posix-dwarf-rt_v4-rev0
Qt 5.12, Qt 5.13, Qt 5.14	mingw-builds i686-7.3.0-release-posix-dwarf-rt_v5-rev0, mingw-builds x86_64-7.3.0-release-posix-seh-rt_v5-rev0
Qt 5.15	mingw-builds i686-8.1.0-release-posix-dwarf-rt_v6-rev0, mingw-builds x86_64-8.1.0-release-posix-seh-rt_v6-rev0
Qt 6.0, Qt 6.1, Qt 6.2.0, Qt 6.2.1	mingw-builds x86_64-8.1.0-release-posix-seh-rt_v6-rev0
Qt 6.2.2, 6.2.3, 6.2.4	mingw-builds x86_64-11.2.0-release-posix-seh-rt_v9-rev1
Qt 6.3.0 ->	mingw-builds x86_64-11.2.0-release-posix-seh-rt_v9-rev3
Qt 6.8.0 ->	mingw-builds 13.1.0-202407240918mingw1310

Common problems

Link error 'Undefined reference to _Unwind_Resume'

This error occurs if object files / libraries being linked are compiled with different versions of mingw. The following steps can fix a problem:

Execute
```
mingw32-make distclean
```
in order to remove all object files that was compiled with different mings versions.
Explicitly set library path by setting
```
LIBRARY_PATH
```
environment variable, for example
```
set LIBRARY_PATH=c:\mingw\lib
```
. gcc linker have a very complicated library search algorithm[1] that can result in wrong library being linked (for example, mingw can find installation of strawberry perl in PATH and use it's library).

@@ Line 2: / Line 2: @@
 [[Category:Tools]]
 [[Category:MinGW]]
-MinGW is a free and open source Windows port of the GCC compiler and related tools. Qt supports MinGW as a platform on Windows in addition to Visual Studio compiler by Microsoft. However, it can also be used as a cross-compiler e.g. on Unix (currently not officially supported).
+MinGW is a free and open source Windows port of the GCC compiler and related tools. Qt supports MinGW as a platform on Windows (in addition to the Visual Studio compiler by Microsoft). However, it can also be used as a cross-compiler e.g. on Unix (currently not officially supported).
 [[Qt Creator]] supports compiling with a MinGW toolchain out of the box.
@@ Line 9: / Line 10: @@
 There are actually different MinGW toolchains and packages available:
+*[https://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/ MinGW] is the original project. It only compiles for 32-bit binaries.
+*[https://www.mingw-w64.org/downloads/#msys2 MinGW-w64] is a fork with the original which also supports generation of 64-bit binaries. By now it also supports a much larger part of the Win32 API. The MinGW-w64 project does host several different binary packages, done by different people.
-[http://www.mingw.org MinGW.org] is the original project. The latest version gcc 4.7.2. It only compiles for 32 bit binaries.
+There are binary installers targeting MinGW for both Qt 4 and Qt 5. Up to Qt 4.8.6, Qt 4 ones are built with a MinGW toolchain using GCC 4.4. Newer Qt 4.8 binary packages ship with a MinGW-w64 based toolchain. For Qt 5, original MinGW toolchains are no longer supported.
-[http://mingw-w64.sourceforge.net MinGW-w64] [mingw-w64.sourceforge.net]  is a fork with the original aim to also support generation of 64 bit binaries. By now it also supports a much larger part of the Win32 API. The MinGW-w64 project does host several different binary packages, done by different people.
-There are binary installers targetting MinGW for both Qt 4 and Qt 5. Up to Qt 4.8.6, Qt 4 ones are built with a MinGW.org toolchain using gcc 4.4. Newer Qt 4.8 binary packages ship with a mingw-w64 based toolchain. For Qt 5, a newer MinGW-w64 toolchain is actually required.
 =Toolchains used in Qt binary packages=
 {| class="wikitable"
-! style="text-align:left;" |Qt Version
+! style="text-align:left;" |Qt version
 ! style="text-align:left;" |MinGW toolchain
-|-
-|Qt 4.8.5
-|The binary packages were compiled mingw.org gcc 4.4 toolchain that is unfortunately not officially provided anymore. See also [http://forum.qt.io/viewthread/21079 this forum thread] [qt-project.org]
 |-
 |Qt 4.8.6, Qt 4.8.7
@@ Line 75: / Line 71: @@
 #Execute <code>mingw32-make distclean</code> in order to remove all object files that was compiled with different mings versions.
 #Explicitly set library path by setting <code>LIBRARY_PATH</code> environment variable, for example <code>set LIBRARY_PATH=c:\mingw\lib</code>. gcc linker have a very complicated library search algorithm[1] that can result in wrong library being linked (for example, mingw can find installation of strawberry perl in PATH and use it's library).
+= See also =
+* [[MinGW-64-bit]]