mingw-gcc-cross

A Clang and GCC cross-compiler targeting MinGW on Windows.

Quick start

First, start by downloading the precompiled binaries for your platform. For reference, you can download the prebuilt binaries of the toolchain for Linux x86_64 with:

$ wget https://github.com/AmanoTeam/mingw-gcc-cross/releases/download/latest/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.xz
$ tar --extract --file=x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.xz

After unpacking the tarball, you will find the cross-compiler as well as wrapper scripts for targeting a specific C runtime inside the mingw-gcc-cross/bin directory:

$ ls mingw-gcc-cross/bin
...
x86_64-w64-mingw32-ucrt-clang
x86_64-w64-mingw32-ucrt-clang++
x86_64-w64-mingw32-ucrt-g++
x86_64-w64-mingw32-ucrt-gcc
...

You can use them as follows:

# Compile C programs
x86_64-w64-mingw32-ucrt-gcc main.c -o main
# Compile C++ programs
x86_64-w64-mingw32-ucrt-g++ main.cpp -o main

If you prefer, you can use Clang instead of GCC. Just make sure to replace the gcc/g++ suffixes with clang/clang++.

You can also switch between the MSVCRT and UCRT runtimes by using compilers with the corresponding *-msvcrt-* or *-ucrt-* suffixes.

Cross-compilation

CMake

Inside the mingw-gcc-cross/build/cmake directory, there is a custom CMake toolchain file for each supported cross-compilation target:

$ ls mingw-gcc-cross/build/cmake
x86_64-w64-mingw32-ucrt.cmake
x86_64-w64-mingw32.cmake
...
i686-w64-mingw32-ucrt.cmake
i686-w64-mingw32.cmake
...

To use one of them, pass the CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE definition to your CMake command invocation:

# Setup the environment for cross-compilation
cmake \
  -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=~/mingw-gcc-cross/build/cmake/x86_64-w64-mingw32-ucrt.cmake \
  -B build \
  -S  ./
# Build the project
cmake --build ./build

GNU Autotools (aka GNU Build System)

Inside the mingw-gcc-cross/build/autotools directory, there is a custom bash script for each supported cross-compilation target:

$ ls mingw-gcc-cross/build/autotools
x86_64-w64-mingw32-ucrt.sh
x86_64-w64-mingw32.sh
...
i686-w64-mingw32-ucrt.sh
i686-w64-mingw32.sh
...

They are meant to be sourced by you whenever you want to cross-compile something:

# Setup the environment for cross-compilation
source ~/mingw-gcc-cross/build/autotools/x86_64-w64-mingw32-ucrt.sh
# Configure & build the project
./configure --host="${CROSS_COMPILE_TRIPLET}"
make

Essentially, these scripts handle the setup of CC, CXX, LD, and other environment variables so you don’t need to configure them manually.

To restore your environment to its original state, run the deactivate.sh script from the same directory:

source ~/mingw-gcc-cross/build/autotools/deactivate.sh

Software availability

For convenience, the toolchain includes an APT-like utility that installs packages from remote repositories into a local directory and makes them available for use during cross-compilation. It is powered by the package collection of the MSYS2 project.

Below is an example of building a CMake project that uses prebuilt dependencies installed through this package manager:

1. Fetch the project sources (using curl as an example):

   git clone https://github.com/curl/curl
   cd curl

2. Configure the environment for cross-compilation:

   source ~/mingw-gcc-cross/build/autotools/x86_64-w64-mingw32-ucrt.sh

3. Install the required dependencies:

   ~/mingw-gcc-cross/bin/x86_64-w64-mingw32-ucrt-apt install mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-curl

4. Build curl as usual:

   cmake -S . -B build
   cmake --build build

Releases

The current release is based on GCC 16 and supports cross-compiling for the x86 and x86_64 targets. The toolchain includes support for the C and C++ frontends.

You can download the prebuilt toolchains from the releases page.