MSYS2 tips

gistfile1.txt

https://stackoverflow.com/a/30071634

  Download MSYS2 from this page (choose 32 or 64-bit according to what version of Windows you are going to use it on, not what kind of executables you want to build, both versions can build both 32 and 64-bit binaries).
  After the install completes, click on the newly created "MSYS2 Shell" option under either MSYS2 64-bit or MSYS2 32-bit in the Start menu. Update MSYS2 according to the wiki (although I just do a pacman -Syu, ignore all errors and close the window and open a new one, this is not recommended and you should do what the wiki page says).
Install a toolchain
a) for 32-bit:
  pacman -S mingw-w64-i686-gcc
b) for 64-bit:
  pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc

install any libraries/tools you may need. You can search the repositories by doing
pacman -Ss name_of_something_i_want_to_install
e.g.
  pacman -Ss gsl
  
  and install using
  pacman -S package_name_of_something_i_want_to_install

e.g.
  pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-gsl
  
  and from then on the GSL library is automatically found by your MinGW-w64 64-bit compiler!

Open a MinGW-w64 shell:
  a) To build 32-bit things, open the "MinGW-w64 32-bit Shell"
  b) To build 64-bit things, open the "MinGW-w64 64-bit Shell"

Verify that the compiler is working by doing
gcc -v

If you want to use the toolchains (with installed libraries) outside of the MSYS2 environment, all you need to do is add <MSYS2 root>/mingw32/bin or <MSYS2 root>/mingw64/bin to your PATH.