Where can I get MinGW?
Initially, MinGW was an assortment of individual packages… the MinGW runtime, various applications built using that runtime (gcc, ld, etc.), and other useful components (the w32api headers needed to code for the Win32 API). Developers “rolled their own” MinGW environments by downloading the latest versions of each individual package needed. This was necessary given the dynamic nature of early package versions (updates being posted constantly)… but was oftentimes confusing for newbies, and made it difficult for application/library vendors to design products that build with a “standard” MinGW environment. Therefore, around mid-2001 when development had matured and updates were not being packaged as rapidly, the decision was made to create a single-file distribution of the standard MinGW environment. This single archive contains the files from each component package, bundled and ready to extract. The individual component packages are still available for download… if a particular pac
