Simple guide to set-up a MinGW-w64 environment on Windows using MSYS2

msys2_mingw-w64-env-setup.txt

Part 1: Installing MSYS2/MinGW-W64

Windows is a piece of shit so to make the projects and code interoperable between Windows and Linux
development environments we need to setup a Linux compatible build environment on Windows.

    1. Go to http://msys2.github.io/
    2. Follow instructions 1 - 6 on the page. Make sure you remember where you installed this!
        NB: For instruction 6 it asks you to close MSYS2, do this by pressing the X button, not
            by typing exit (which is how you would normally do it).
    3. Type the following command into the MSYS2 shell:
    
        pacman -Sy base-devel mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc mingw-w64-x86_64-glew mingw-w64-x86_64-SDL2
   
       This will install basic development tools (base-devel), the GCC C(++) compiler for Windows,
       the GLEW library (http://glew.sourceforge.net/) which is a library that makes working with
       OpenGL simple, and SDL2 (http://www.libsdl.org/) which is a cross-platform development
       library providing easy access to audio, keyboard, mouse, and graphics hardware.
       
Part 2: Installing an IDE

I personally use the Code::Blocks IDE for C(++) development. It's an open-source program with pre-
build Windows binaries. They ship two versions of the IDE for Windows, one with a C compiler and one
without. We will be using the one without a C compiler as the one they ship is for 32-bit programs.

    1. Go to http://www.codeblocks.org/downloads/26
    2. Download the file codeblocks-13.12-setup.exe using the Sourceforge.net link
    3. Run the installer and launch Code::Blocks.
    
Since we're using our own installation of the C compiler we need to poke Code::Blocks in the right
direction so it knows what to run.

    4. Go to Settings->Compiler.
    5. If the selected compiler is not "GNU GCC Compiler", select it and set it as default
    6. Go to the Toolchain executables tab.
    7. Set the compiler's install directory. If you didn't change the install directory earlier then
       you will need to set it to
       
            C:\msys64\mingw64
            
       otherwise you'll need to change it to your install directory, and add on mingw64 to the end.
    8. Change the program files to the following:
            C compiler: gcc.exe
            C++ compiler: g++.exe
            Linker for dynamic libs: g++.exe
            Linker for static libs: ar.exe
            Resource compiler: windres.exe
            Make program: mingw32-make.exe
       If the debugger says "Invalid debugger" then you will need to come back here after the next
       section to set up the debugger.
       
As a final step we need to configure a debugger so we can inspect our programs as they run and
diagnose problems. We'll be using GDB which is a good debugger but a bit hard to use if you're not
used to it. The Visual Studio debugger is great but we'd need to run two separate projects to be
able to use the VS debugger easily, which is a lot of hassle.

    9. Go to Settings->Debugger.
    10. Go to GDB/CDB debugger. If a profile already exists, go to it. Otherwise create a new configure
        with a name of your choice.
    11. Set the executable path to
            C:\msys64\usr\bin\gdb.exe
        You will need to change the first part if you changed the install location for MSYS2 at the
        start of this guide.
    12. Set the debugger type to GDB. Enable the following options:
            Watch function arguments
            Watch local variables
            Enable watch scripts
            Catch C++ exceptions
        I leave the rest disabled but you could turn them on if you want.