MSYS2: Arch Linux on Microsoft Windows

MSYS2 makes Windows be less of a special case for C&#x2F;C++ software development. You can use all your favorite build tools from Linux, and there is a large and growing library of software you can install with the package manager. It&#x27;s easy to contribute your own packages or improve existing ones by making pull requests to here:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Alexpux&#x2F;MINGW-packages" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Alexpux&#x2F;MINGW-packages</a>

Is there any way to summon dang to fix a title? This project uses the Arch Linux package manager, but is otherwise completely unrelated to Arch.

Msys2 is amazing, and everyone should know about and support this project.

How are packages authenticated? I did an evaluation a couple of months ago but decided to drop it when I saw that packages where being pulled over plain HTTP and seemingly no authentication was being preformed.<p>For software build systems - my use case - this type of security lapse is a deal breaker.

Cygwin&#x27;s got some issues about portability, IMHO. When a Cygwin application is run from a shell &amp; terminal emulator other then Cygwin&#x27;s defaults it throws up an error like:<p>&quot;cygheap base mismatch detected - 0x612F7400&#x2F;0x612FB400 This problem is probably due to using incompatible versions of the cygwin DLL. Search for cygwin1.dll using the Windows Start-&gt;Find&#x2F;Search facility and delete all but the most recent version. The most recent version <i>should</i> reside in x:\cygwin\bin, where &#x27;x&#x27; is the drive on which you have installed the cygwin distribution. Rebooting is also suggested if you are unable to find another cygwin DLL. Segmentation fault&quot;<p>It&#x27;s almost like they&#x27;re coupled to some particular shell and some particularly configured terminal emulator (Mintty). Cygwin is the historical leader of Linux on Windows but that limitation is never desirable.<p>MSYS and MSYS2 don&#x27;t seem to have such a limitation and that&#x27;s nice.

So am I understanding this correctly, but this is not a compatibility layer where we can run native linux applications on windows, instead it&#x27;s like cygwin where we can run ported applications, only this one uses pacman for distribution of packages?

Yeah, +1 for this project. Using it to compile cross-platform software (Heimdall) on Windows. Saves me maintaining two project files. Pair this with CLion and you&#x27;ve got yourself a complete cross-platform workflow.

if you already have Linux or OS X running, but just want to compile some stuff for Windows then I&#x27;d recommend looking into <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mxe.cc" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mxe.cc</a>

Looks like there are two gcc versions, one is msys&#x2F;gcc which is 4.9 and the other is mingw gcc which is 5.3. For a person like me who doesn&#x27;t know anything about the differences between cygwin&#x2F;mingw&#x2F;msys etc. this is a little bit confusing.

I love this project. At work we had to make our software run on Windows and MSYS2 makes it feel you&#x27;re not that far from your confort zone.<p>Maintainers are really helpful when I sent patches and on IRC, and the software has been running stable for over a year now.<p>Rock on folks!

is this actually arch linux or pacman + packages ported to windows?<p>maybe that&#x27;s the same thing, idk

More GNU software taking over windows is a good thing. Especially when it painlessly handles package management. If I&#x27;m ever forced to use a windows machine for work, I&#x27;ll make sure to install this first.

Would be nice to have a small section explaining what MSYS2 is on that page first.

I tried it recently, didn&#x27;t work with cmake OOB the way old msys did for me.

Can someone give a good rundown what is improved in MSYS2 vs MSYS&#x2F;MinGW?

how does this compare to the bash emulation that comes with git for windows? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;git-for-windows.github.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;git-for-windows.github.io&#x2F;</a>

How is fork() implemented?

MSYS2 is really nice, but it fails on bigger projects like compiling Blender.

Msys2 is a fantastic project with a lot of packages. It saved the day when compiling H3D and even Hugin.<p>It is a pitty it cannot build latest Abiword&#x2F;Gnumeric yet. But we have Cygwin for this.<p>In any case it is a very serious addition to Windows ecosystem and people should start rethinking using Visual Studio which provides no pre-compiled libraries or package management.<p>However, one ca get a descent alternative development environment by using<p>msys2&#x2F;tdm-x64 and fedora precompiled packages.