Mingw

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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).

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.org":http://www.mingw.org is the original project. The latest version gcc 4.7.2. It only compiles for 32 bit binaries.

"MinGW-w64":http://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

{background:#009900}. |. Qt Version |. 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 "this forum thread":http://forum.qt.io/viewthread/21079 . |
{background:#ddd}. | Qt 4.8.6 | "mingw-builds i686-4.8.2-release-posix-dwarf-rt_v3-rev3":http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw-w64/files/Toolchains targetting Win32/Personal Builds/mingw-builds/4.8.2/threads-posix/dwarf/i686-4.8.2-release-posix-dwarf-rt_v3-rev3.7z/download |
| Qt 5.0| "mingw-builds x32-4.7.2-release-posix-sjlj-rev8":http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingwbuilds/files/host-windows/releases/4.7.2/32-bit/threads-posix/sjlj/x32-4.7.2-release-posix-sjlj-rev8.7z/download |
{background:#ddd}. | Qt 5.1| "mingw-builds x32-4.8.0-release-posix-dwarf-rev2":http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingwbuilds/files/host-windows/releases/4.8.0/32-bit/threads-posix/dwarf/x32-4.8.0-release-posix-dwarf-rev2.7z/download |
| Qt 5.2, Qt 5.3| "mingw-builds i686-4.8.2-release-posix-dwarf-rt_v3-rev3":http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw-w64/files/Toolchains targetting Win32/Personal Builds/mingw-builds/4.8.2/threads-posix/dwarf/i686-4.8.2-release-posix-dwarf-rt_v3-rev3.7z/download |
{background:#ddd}. | Qt 5.4| "mingw-builds i686-4.9.1-release-posix-dwarf-rt_v3-rev2":http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw-w64/files/Toolchains targetting Win32/Personal Builds/mingw-builds/4.9.1/threads-posix/dwarf/i686-4.9.1-release-posix-dwarf-rt_v3-rev2.7z/download |

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:

1. Execute

   mingw32-make distclean
   

   in order to remove all object files that was compiled with different mings versions.
2. Explicitly set library path by setting

   LIBRARY_PATH
   

   environment variable, for example

   set LIBRARY_PATH=c:010.04\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).