MSYS2

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MSYS2 and MSYS2 (Minimal SYStem 2) is an independent rewrite of MSYS, a (command-line) shell for development usage, and based on modern Cygwin (POSIX compatibility layer) and MinGW-w64 (from "MinGW-builds"), with the aim of better interoperability with native Windows software. It includes: MSYS2-shell and MinGW-w64 Win32 shell & MinGW-w64 Win64 shell. It supports & can work with both 32bit & 64bit multiple toolchains & targets, (for 64bit a 64bit operating system is needed). MSYS2 is a successor of MSYS and MinGW-builds. MSYS2-shell uses "pacman" for downloading packages from repo, and these are GPG signed & verified. Packages are by developer: lexx83 (Alexpux), mingwandroid, niXman. MSYS2 is a complete opensource development environment+shell solution+system. It can obtain related all toolchains & dependency packages from "MinGW-builds" and MSYS2 REPO, for compiling/building other software. It can also obtain various directly usable tools & language support & compilers, like: perl, python, ruby, openssl, etc.

A user has these options to choose from: by using MSYS2-shell & MinGW-w64 Win64 shell: (option-A), either download Qt or QtCreator source (from MSYS2 repo) and compile/build inside MSYS2, or (option-B), a user can get official Qt source or QtCreator source, and then compile/build using mingw-w64 toolchains obtained from MSYS2 repo, from the windows Cmd-shell, or (option-C), a user can get Qt or QtCreator software-building scripts from MSYS2's "MINGW-packages" repo, and compile/build using mingw-w64 toolchains obtained from MSYS2 repo, inside MSYS2-shell, or (option-D), a user can download pre-built binary files of Qt & QtCreator (dynamic/shared and/or static built editions) inside MSYS2, and run+use them instantly without compiling.

Obtain & Install

MSYS2, MSYS2. Use HTTPS based secure connection and obtain MSYS2. Run the installer binary. Install MSYS2 in C:drive in "msys2" folder.

Initial Setup of MSYS2

• Run MSYS2 shell (Command Prompt). C:2\msys2_shell.bat

• First update msys2 core components (if you have not done it yet):

pacman -Sy
pacman --needed -S bash pacman pacman-mirrors msys2-runtime

You must exit out from MSYS2-shell, restart MSYS2-shell, then run below command, to complete rest of other components update:

pacman -Su

Exit out of MSYS2-shell, restart MSYS2-shell, then you are ready to use MSYS2-shell. Note: for initial installation & setup, please also see [1]. Here -S means "sync".

Prepare MSYS2 for Qt related build development environment

• Start MSYS2-shell. Run/execute below commands to load MinGW-w64 SEH (64bit/x86_64) posix and Dwarf-2 (32bit/i686) posix toolchains & related other tools, dependencies & components from MSYS2 REPO (MINGW-packages, MSYS2-packages):

pacman -S base-devel git mercurial cvs wget p7zip
pacman -S perl ruby python2 mingw-w64-i686-toolchain mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain

Note: the i686(32bit) toolchain loads into /c/msys2/mingw32/bin (C:2\mingw32\bin) directory location, and, x86_64(64bit) toolchain loads into /c/msys2/mingw64/bin (C:2\mingw64\bin) directory. Perl, Ruby, Python, OpenSSL etc loads into /c/msys2/usr/bin (C:2\usr\bin) directory.

• Build Qt : follow Qt building/compiling related articles
  • MinGW-64-bit
  • or Building Qt 5 from Git, etc
  • Qt can also be compiled/built, using the software-building scripts from MSYS2 based MinGW-w64 Packages Repo, for details see below "PKGBUILD" section.

Obtain Pre-Built Qt & QtCreator binary files and Use instantly without Building/Compiling

If you are going to build Qt using MinGW-w64 toolchains which are inside MSYS2, then you do need to do get pre-built Qt binary files, but choice is upto you.

• Start MSYS2-shell. Run/execute below commands, to install/load, a pre-built dynamic/shared library environment edition of Qt & QtCreator binary files from MSYS2 REPO, for developing, testing, compiling/building or releasing opensource or closedsource software:

pacman -S mingw-w64-i686-qt-creator mingw-w64-x86_64-qt-creator

If you also want to install/load, a pre-built static library environment edition of Qt binary files, for compiling & releasing opensource projects, (with almost one/single file based standalone or portable binary executable file), then run/execute below command:

pacman -S mingw-w64-i686-qt5-static mingw-w64-x86_64-qt5-static

Note: There is no static edition of QtCreator.

How to build using MSYS2's software-building scripts (PKGBUILD & patches)

• run MSYS2-shell (C:2\msys2_shell.bat)
• create a folder to download build related scripts, then git clone software-building script REPO, from MSYS2's MINGW-packages REPO (mirror)

mkdir /c/msys2/repos
cd /c/msys2/repos
git clone https://github.com/Alexpux/MINGW-packages.git

• goto your choice of software-building script's sub-folder, which has a "PKGBUILD" file. For example, here we are showing how to build Qt5:

cd ${package-name}

For example, we want to build Qt5, so here our command will be: cd /c/msys2/repos/mingw-packages/mingw-w64-qt5

• update it:

updpkgsums

• build it:

makepkg-mingw -fsiL

• install built package. (make sure you are inside correct sub-directory, for our example, you need to be inside here /c/msys2/repos/mingw-packages/mingw-w64-qt5) (the -U is "upgrade")

pacman -U ${package-name}'''.pkg.tar.xz

So for our example, our install command will be: pacman -U.pkg.tar.xz