How To Install Dev C++ With Mingw64 Libraries

Other Libraries and Tools to Use with MinGW

If you want to compile and build cross-platform Open Source programs that you might typically find in a POSIX environment (Linux, Cygwin or BSD), you'll need some of the standard libraries and tools these systems use to build applicatons. There's still no guarantee a program from another system will port to Windows unless it's been designed to, but many applications that work on POSIX systems can be built and run on Windows with some minor patching. Look for command line tools or programs built on cross-platform libraries like curses (pdcurses on Windows, ncurses on POSIX), gtk+, fltk, fox toolkit, wxwidgets, qt for your best bets on Open Source programs that will port to Windows or may already have ports. If you do get a port running, you can help the project by contributing a mgwport of it so others don't have to try to repeat the work you've done.

These pages are freely editable and are a community effort to display and give direction. We are currently in the process of moving the data from the previous wiki, so you may wish to check there as well.Feel free to join in the effort. OpenCV Install on Windows with Code::Blocks and minGW. Most people I know barely understand setting up their own C projects and linking to 3rd party libraries etc. And using Linux is the best way to see and learn how this works. I also personally recommend staying away from IDEs. Install minGW. MinGW is a c/c compiler for windows.

Installing Libraries

I usually install libraries in the subdirectories under Msys to prevent library files from co-mingling with compiler files and possibly over-writing needed files. According to the MinGW developers mailing list, the decision was made to put libraries built to be used with MinGW in the subdirectories under the directory MinGW is installed in instead of under Msys. This keeps a division between libraries used to create programs for a standard Windows environment and programs specifically for the Msys environment only. When you look at the MinGW downloads at Sourceforge, most libraries are labeled for MinGW or for Msys. You'll generally want to use the versions for MinGW if you're building a standard Windows application.

Most MinGW files at Sourceforge are in the tar.lzma format. LZMA based compression can help create smaller packages in most cases than other formats like tar.gz (.tgz) and tar.bz2 (.tbz). Both xz and lzma use lzma compression algorithms. I don't know why lzma was chosen over xz for packages with MinGW. According to the creators of both the lzma and xz formats, lzma is being deprecated. See http://tukaani.org/lzma/ for more information. However, you can still decompress lzma files with the xz program using the -lzma switch or use the older lzma program.

To manage libraries or extra files that need to be installed in your compiler directories, you can use a program such as spkg. That way, you don't accidentally over-write compiler files. You can tell which libraries are installed and update them quickly and easily to the next version. You can also uninstall them without having to track down all files in a package when they're no longer needed. To work with Spkg, set the ROOT environment variable to the top level directory where you want to install to (example: SET ROOT=c:MinGW). Spkg requires names of files you install to use the standard Slackware package naming conventions. See the package how-to at http://www.linuxpackages.net. Packages are simply tarballs (a combination of using tar to archive a file and a compression algorithm like gzip or xz or lzma to compress the archived file). Slackware packages also add a few files to an install directory within the tarball to give extra information about the package. These may include a description of the program or library in a slack-desc file and a list of other programs or libraries needed to make it work in a slack-required file. These extra files are optional and aren't necessary to install a package using spkg. Spkg works well for .tgz (.tar.gz) files, but might need some tweaking and program updates for the new .txz format or to handle MinGW packages' use of .tar.lzma. Worst case scenario, you can always decompress and unarchive a package, recreate the package in .txz or .tgz format with a proper name (and even add a slack-desc for better documentation) and then install.

Some Standard GNU Tools and Libraries

Building Programs

Many programs can be compiled and built in msys using ./configure, make, make install commands. GNU has provided tools to help create and run the files that let you do this.

One of the simpler tools to work with for building applications and libraries is a make file. There's a program called make that uses the information in the make file to build the library or application. For more information, see http://www.gnu.org/software/make/. The make program provided with your latest msys installation should be fairly up-to-date.

For the configure scripts, having up-to-date versions of autoconf and automake are useful. If you don't have the latest, you can download the mingw32 versions from Sourceforge. Install in your MinGW directory (top directory where MinGW compiler suite was installed). According to gnu.org, 'autoconf is an extensible package of M4 macros that produce shell scripts to automatically configure software source code packages'. See http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/ for details. Also from the gnu.org site, 'GNU M4 is an implementation of the traditional Unix macro processor'. If you want to know more about M4, see http://www.gnu.org/software/m4/m4.html. A fairly up-to-date version of M4 should have been installed with your latest msys installation. According to gnu.org, 'automake is a tool for automatically generating 'Makefile.in' files compliant with the GNU Coding Standards'. See http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/ for details.

According to gnu.org, 'GNU libtool is a generic library support script. Libtool hides the complexity of using shared libraries behind a consistent, portable interface.' See http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/ for details. You'll find updated versions of this as well at Sourceforge in the MinGW downloads section. Check the release file for notes. There's mention of an issue with linking against the static libstdc++ runtime. If you get an error that the compiler is trying to find the dll version and there isn't one, be sure to see the note.

Internationalization

GNU also provides some standard tools and libraries for handling internationalization and language issues. These include gettext and libiconv. According to gnu.org, 'the GNU 'gettext' utilities are a set of tools that provides a framework to help other GNU packages produce multi-lingual messages'. See http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/ for details. According to gnu.org, GNU libiconv is a conversion library for converting between a given text encoding and the user's encoding and for converting between internal string representation (Unicode) and external string representation (a traditional encoding) when programs do I/O. See http://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/ for details. If you're attempting to build an Open Source application that looks for gettext or libiconv, you'll probably want to add these libraries to your system. You'll find them in the MinGW Sourceforge downloads. Check the release notes file for information on what helper files you need to download and install with these libraries. The MinGW versions (with mingw instead of msys in their file names) are for typical MinGW users and need to be installed in the MinGW directory (top directory where MinGW compiler suite was installed) in order to work properly.

Shared Libraries

POSIX systems use shared libraries (.so) while the Windows standard is the dll. To help bridge that gap, there's a wrapper library, dlfcn. You can download it from http://code.google.com/p/dlfcn-win32/.

Threading

Threading support has been added to later versions of MinGW. Windows compilers don't normally supply POSIX style threading with a standard installation. A library for Cygwin (and MinGW) was created by Red Hat and the Cygwin developers to bridge that gap. You'll find more about POSIX threads here http://sourceware.org/pthreads-win32/. If you've installed pthreads-w32 from the MinGW Sourceforge download page, then you don't need to install the Cygwin version as well.

Screen Libraries

GTK+

GTK+ is one of the more popular cross-platform screen libraries on POSIX systems. It's used by the GNOME desktop and many applications. You can also use GTK+ on Windows. Check the GTK+ site http://www.gtk.org/download-windows.html for useful GTK+ libraries to install and use with MinGW and msys. Some of the libraries on the GTK+ Windows download page are also available in the MinGW download files section. If possible, you'll most often want to use the MinGW versions of these libraries at the MinGW Sourceforge archive. For the main GTK+ libraries such as glib, pango, atk, cairo, it's best to download straight from the source, the GTK+ site. GTK+ can be configured to give a similar look and feel to all GTK+ based applications. See programs such as stardict at Sourceforge for some tools to customize GTK+ themes on your system.

Further Information

How you can help

This is just the start for a list of some of the tools and libraries that can help with porting. The mingwPORT system was designed to help assist MinGW users in adding other useful libraries and tools to their system. It can also be used to build applications. However, developers first need to contribute mingwPORT scripts so that others can use them and save time on patching, porting and installation. There's also a newer system for building and maintaining packages called mgwport which is compatible with Cygwin's cygport system. Please help the MinGW project out by contributing scripts for some of the Open Source programs and libraries you've built with MinGW. The MinGW project also needs a volunteer to write up some information on how to use mgwport.

If you need an easy way to install, uninstall, update and track libraries or applications (tarball packages) on your system, take a look at spkg. It's a good way to avoid the registry for installations (which may be useful with portable apps).

You can help by adding links to other standard Open Source tools and libraries that you've found useful when building applications using MinGW and msys. You can share what versions of various tools described above or found in the MinGW downloads you prefer working with. Do you have any tips for installing or tweaking these libraries and utilities to help you build applications? Please post your favorite tips and tricks below.

In this tutorial, you configure Visual Studio Code to use the GCC C++ compiler (g++) and GDB debugger from Mingw-w64 to create programs that run on Windows.

After configuring VS Code, you will compile and debug a simple Hello World program in VS Code. This tutorial does not teach you about GCC or Mingw-w64 or the C++ language. For those subjects, there are many good resources available on the Web.

If you have any problems, feel free to file an issue for this tutorial in the VS Code documentation repository.

Prerequisites

To successfully complete this tutorial, you must do the following steps:

  1. Install Visual Studio Code.

  2. Install the C/C++ extension for VS Code. You can install the C/C++ extension by searching for 'c++' in the Extensions view (⇧⌘X (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+X)).

  3. You will install Mingw-w64 via the SourceForge website. Click Mingw-w64 to begin downloading the compressed archive file. Extract the tools from the compressed file to a folder that has no spaces in its path. In this tutorial, we assume it is installed under C:mingw-w64.

  4. Add the path to your Mingw-w64 bin folder to the Windows PATH environment variable.

    1. In the Windows search bar, type 'settings' to open your Windows Settings.
    2. Search for Edit environment variables for your account.
    3. Choose the Path variable and then select Edit.
    4. Select New and add the Mingw-w64 path to the system path. The exact path depends on which version of Mingw-w64 you have installed and where you installed it. Here is an example: c:mingw-w64x86_64-8.1.0-win32-seh-rt_v6-rev0mingw64bin.
    5. Select OK to save the Path update. You will need to reopen any console windows for the new PATH location to be available.

Check your MinGW installation

To check that your Mingw-w64 tools are correctly installed and available, open a new Command Prompt and type:

If you don't see the expected output or g++ or gdb is not a recognized command, check your installation (Windows Control Panel > Programs) and make sure your PATH entry matches the Mingw-w64 location.

Create Hello World

From a Windows command prompt, create an empty folder called projects where you can place all your VS Code projects. Then create a sub-folder called helloworld, navigate into it, and open VS Code in that folder by entering the following commands:

The 'code .' command opens VS Code in the current working folder, which becomes your 'workspace'. As you go through the tutorial, you will see three files created in a .vscode folder in the workspace:

  • tasks.json (build instructions)
  • launch.json (debugger settings)
  • c_cpp_properties.json (compiler path and IntelliSense settings)

Add a source code file

In the File Explorer title bar, select the New File button and name the file helloworld.cpp.

Add hello world source code

Now paste in this source code:

Now press ⌘S (Windows, Linux Ctrl+S) to save the file. Notice how the file you just added appears in the File Explorer view (⇧⌘E (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+E)) in the side bar of VS Code:

You can also enable Auto Save to automatically save your file changes, by checking Auto Save in the main File menu.

The Activity Bar on the far left lets you open different views such as Search, Source Control, and Run. You'll look at the Run view later in this tutorial. You can find out more about the other views in the VS Code User Interface documentation.

Note: When you save or open a C++ file, you may see a notification from the C/C++ extension about the availability of an Insiders version, which lets you test new features and fixes. You can ignore this notification by selecting the X (Clear Notification). /nexus-vst-expansion-packs-download.html.

Explore IntelliSense

In your new helloworld.cpp file, hover over vector or string to see type information. After the declaration of the msg variable, start typing msg. as you would when calling a member function. You should immediately see a completion list that shows all the member functions, and a window that shows the type information for the msg object:

You can press the Tab key to insert the selected member; then, when you add the opening parenthesis, you will see information about any arguments that the function requires.

Build helloworld.cpp

Next, you will create a tasks.json file to tell VS Code how to build (compile) the program. This task will invoke the g++ compiler to create an executable file based on the source code.

From the main menu, choose Terminal > Configure Default Build Task. In the dropdown, which will display a tasks dropdown listing various predefined build tasks for C++ compilers. Choose g++.exe build active file, which will build the file that is currently displayed (active) in the editor.

This will create a tasks.json file in a .vscode folder and open it in the editor.

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Your new tasks.json file should look similar to the JSON below:

The command setting specifies the program to run; in this case that is g++. The args array specifies the command-line arguments that will be passed to g++. These arguments must be specified in the order expected by the compiler. This task tells g++ to take the active file (${file}), compile it, and create an executable file in the current directory (${fileDirname}) with the same name as the active file but with the .exe extension (${fileBasenameNoExtension}.exe), resulting in helloworld.exe for our example.

Note: You can learn more about task.json variables in the variables reference.

The label value is what you will see in the tasks list; you can name this whatever you like.

The 'isDefault': true value in the group object specifies that this task will be run when you press ⇧⌘B (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+B). This property is for convenience only; if you set it to false, you can still run it from the Terminal menu with Tasks: Run Build Task.

Running the build

  1. Go back to helloworld.cpp. Your task builds the active file and you want to build helloworld.cpp.

  2. To run the build task defined in tasks.json, press ⇧⌘B (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+B) or from the Terminal main menu choose Tasks: Run Build Task.

  3. When the task starts, you should see the Integrated Terminal panel appear below the source code editor. After the task completes, the terminal shows output from the compiler that indicates whether the build succeeded or failed. For a successful g++ build, the output looks something like this:

  4. Create a new terminal using the + button and you'll have a new terminal (running PowerShell) with the helloworld folder as the working directory. Run dir and you should now see the executable helloworld.exe.

  5. You can run helloworld in the terminal by typing .helloworld.exe.

Note: You might need to press Enter a couple of times initially to see the PowerShell prompt in the terminal. This issue should be fixed in a future release of Windows.

Modifying tasks.json

You can modify your tasks.json to build multiple C++ files by using an argument like '${workspaceFolder}*.cpp' instead of ${file}. This will build all .cpp files in your current folder. You can also modify the output filename by replacing '${fileDirname}${fileBasenameNoExtension}.exe' with a hard-coded filename (for example '${workspaceFolder}myProgram.exe').

Debug helloworld.cpp

Next, you'll create a launch.json file to configure VS Code to launch the GDB debugger when you press F5 to debug the program. From the main menu, choose Run > Add Configuration.. and then choose C++ (GDB/LLDB).

You'll then see a dropdown for various predefined debugging configurations. Choose g++.exe build and debug active file.

VS Code creates a launch.json file, opens it in the editor, and builds and runs 'helloworld'.

How To Install Dev C++ With Mingw64 Libraries List

The program setting specifies the program you want to debug. Here it is set to the active file folder ${fileDirname} and active filename with the .exe extension ${fileBasenameNoExtension}.exe, which if helloworld.cpp is the active file will be helloworld.exe.

By default, the C++ extension won't add any breakpoints to your source code and the stopAtEntry value is set to false. Change the stopAtEntry value to true to cause the debugger to stop on the main method when you start debugging.

Start a debugging session

  1. Go back to helloworld.cpp so that it is the active file.
  2. Press F5 or from the main menu choose Run > Start Debugging. Before you start stepping through the source code, let's take a moment to notice several changes in the user interface:

  • The Integrated Terminal appears at the bottom of the source code editor. In the Debug Output tab, you see output that indicates the debugger is up and running.

  • The editor highlights the first statement in the main method. This is a breakpoint that the C++ extension automatically sets for you:

  • The Run view on the left shows debugging information. You'll see an example later in the tutorial.

  • At the top of the code editor, a debugging control panel appears. You can move this around the screen by grabbing the dots on the left side.

Step through the code

Now you're ready to start stepping through the code.

  1. Click or press the Step over icon in the debugging control panel.

    This will advance program execution to the first line of the for loop, and skip over all the internal function calls within the vector and string classes that are invoked when the msg variable is created and initialized. Notice the change in the Variables window on the left.

    In this case, the errors are expected because, although the variable names for the loop are now visible to the debugger, the statement has not executed yet, so there is nothing to read at this point. The contents of msg are visible, however, because that statement has completed.

  2. Press Step over again to advance to the next statement in this program (skipping over all the internal code that is executed to initialize the loop). Now, the Variables window shows information about the loop variables.

  3. Press Step over again to execute the cout statement. (Note that as of the March 2019 release, the C++ extension does not print any output to the Debug Console until the loop exits.)

  4. If you like, you can keep pressing Step over until all the words in the vector have been printed to the console. But if you are curious, try pressing the Step Into button to step through source code in the C++ standard library!

    To return to your own code, one way is to keep pressing Step over. Another way is to set a breakpoint in your code by switching to the helloworld.cpp tab in the code editor, putting the insertion point somewhere on the cout statement inside the loop, and pressing F9. A red dot appears in the gutter on the left to indicate that a breakpoint has been set on this line.

    Then press F5 to start execution from the current line in the standard library header. Execution will break on cout. If you like, you can press F9 again to toggle off the breakpoint.

    When the loop has completed, you can see the output in the Integrated Terminal, along with some other diagnostic information that is output by GDB.

Set a watch

Sometimes you might want to keep track of the value of a variable as your program executes. You can do this by setting a watch on the variable.

  1. Place the insertion point inside the loop. In the Watch window, click the plus sign and in the text box, type word, which is the name of the loop variable. Now view the Watch window as you step through the loop.

  2. Add another watch by adding this statement before the loop: int i = 0;. Then, inside the loop, add this statement: ++i;. Now add a watch for i as you did in the previous step.

  3. To quickly view the value of any variable while execution is paused on a breakpoint, you can hover over it with the mouse pointer.

C/C++ configurations

If you want more control over the C/C++ extension, you can create a c_cpp_properties.json file, which will allow you to change settings such as the path to the compiler, include paths, C++ standard (default is C++17), and more.

You can view the C/C++ configuration UI by running the command C/C++: Edit Configurations (UI) from the Command Palette (⇧⌘P (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+P)).

This opens the C/C++ Configurations page. When you make changes here, VS Code writes them to a file called c_cpp_properties.json in the .vscode folder.

Visual Studio Code places these settings in .vscodec_cpp_properties.json. If you open that file directly, it should look something like this:

You only need to add to the Include path array setting if your program includes header files that are not in your workspace or in the standard library path.

Compiler path

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The compilerPath setting is an important setting in your configuration. The extension uses it to infer the path to the C++ standard library header files. When the extension knows where to find those files, it can provide useful features like smart completions and Go to Definition navigation.

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The C/C++ extension attempts to populate compilerPath with the default compiler location based on what it finds on your system. The extension looks in several common compiler locations.

The compilerPath search order is:

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  • First check for the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler
  • Then look for g++ on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)
  • Then g++ for Mingw-w64.

If you have Visual Studio or WSL installed, you may need to change compilerPath to match the preferred compiler for your project. For example, if you installed Mingw-w64 version 8.1.0 under C:mingw-w64, using the Win32 threads and SEH exception handling options, the path would look like this: C:mingw-w64x86_64-8.1.0-win32-seh-rt_v6-rev0mingw64bing++.exe.

Mingw W64 Setup

Next steps

How To Install Mingw

  • Explore the VS Code User Guide.
  • Review the Overview of the C++ extension.
  • Create a new workspace, copy your .vscode JSON files to it, adjust the necessary settings for the new workspace path, program name, and so on, and start coding!