What is the difference between Cygwin and MinGW

Question

I want to make my C   project cross platform  and I m considering using Cygwin MinGW  But what is the difference between them    Another question is whether I will be able to run the binary on a system without Cygwin MinGW

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Other answers already hit the target  I just want to add an illustration for a quick catch

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Cygwin uses a DLL  cygwin dll   or maybe a set of DLLs  to provide a POSIX-like runtime on Windows   MinGW compiles to a native Win32 application   If you build something with Cygwin  any system you install it to will also need the Cygwin DLL s    A MinGW application does not need any special runtime

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Wikipedia Says      MinGW forked from version 1 3 3 of Cygwin  Although both Cygwin   and MinGW can be used to port UNIX software to Windows  they   have different approaches  Cygwin aims to provide a complete POSIX layer    that provides emulations of several system calls and libraries   that exist on Linux  UNIX  and the BSD variants  The POSIX layer   runs on top of Windows  sacrificing performance where   necessary for compatibility  Accordingly  this approach requires   Windows programs written with Cygwin to run on top of a copylefted   compatibility library that must be distributed with the program  along   with the program s source code  MinGW aims to provide native   functionality and performance via direct Windows API calls  Unlike   Cygwin  MinGW does not require a compatibility layer DLL and   thus programs do not need to be distributed with source code       Because MinGW is dependent upon Windows API calls  it cannot   provide a full POSIX API  it is unable to compile some UNIX applications that can be compiled with Cygwin  Specifically  this   applies to applications that require POSIX functionality like   fork    mmap   or ioctl   and those that expect to be run in a   POSIX environment  Applications written using a cross-platform library that has itself been ported to MinGW  such as SDL    wxWidgets  Qt  or GTK   will usually compile as easily in   MinGW as they would in Cygwin       The combination of MinGW and MSYS provides a small  self-contained   environment that can be loaded onto removable media without leaving   entries in the registry or files on the computer  Cygwin Portable   provides a similar feature  By providing more functionality  Cygwin   becomes more complicated to install and maintain       It is also possible to cross-compile Windows applications with   MinGW-GCC under POSIX systems  This means that developers do not   need a Windows installation with MSYS to compile software that will   run on Windows without Cygwin

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MinGW  or MinGW-w64                Cygwin    --------------------               ------     Your program written        Your program written     for Unix and Linux          for Unix and Linux                                                                                                     V                           V      Heavy modifications       Almost no modifications                                                                                                     V                           V          Compilation                 Compilation  Program compiled with Cygwin --- gt  Compatibility layer --- gt  Windows API  Program compiled with MinGW  or MingGW-w64  ------------- gt  Windows API

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To add to the other answers  Cygwin comes with the MinGW libraries and headers and you can compile without linking to the cygwin1 dll by using -mno-cygwin flag with gcc  I greatly prefer this to using plain MinGW and MSYS

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Cygwin emulates entire POSIX environment  while MinGW is minimal tool set for compilation only  compiles native Win application   So if you want to make your project cross-platform the choice between the two is obvious  MinGW    Although you might consider using VS on Windows  GCC on Linux Unices  Most open source projects do that  e g  Firefox or Python

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Wikipedia does a comparison here   From Cygwin s website         Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows  It consists of two parts  A DLL  cygwin1 dll  which acts as a Linux API emulation layer providing substantial Linux API functionality    A collection of tools which provide Linux look and feel        From Mingw s website      MinGW   Minimalistic GNU for Windows   is a collection of freely available and freely distributable Windows specific header files and import libraries combined with GNU toolsets that allow one to produce native Windows programs that do not rely on any 3rd-party C runtime DLLs

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Cygwin uses a compatibility layer  while MinGW is native  That is one of the main differences

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Cygwin is designed to provide a more-or-less complete POSIX environment for Windows  including an extensive set of tools designed to provide a full-fledged Linux-like platform  In comparison  MinGW and MSYS provide a lightweight  minimalist POSIX-like layer  with only the more essential tools like gcc and bash available  Because of MinGW s more minimalist approach  it does not provide the degree of POSIX API coverage Cygwin offers  and therefore cannot build certain programs which can otherwise be compiled on Cygwin   In terms of the code generated by the two  the Cygwin toolchain relies on dynamic linking to a large runtime library  cygwin1 dll  while the MinGW toolchain compiles code to binaries that link dynamically to the Windows native C library msvcrt dll as well as statically to parts of glibc  Cygwin executables are therefore more compact but require a separate redistributable DLL  while MinGW binaries can be shipped standalone but tend to be larger   The fact that Cygwin-based programs require a separate DLL to run also leads to licensing restrictions  The Cygwin runtime library is licensed under GPLv3 with a linking exception for applications with OSI-compliant licenses  so developers wishing to build a closed-source application around Cygwin must acquire a commercial license from Red Hat  On the other hand  MinGW code can be used in both open-source and closed-source applications  as the headers and libraries are permissively licensed

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Read these answered questions to understand the difference between Cygwin and MinGW     Question  1  I want to create an application that I write source code once  compile it once and run it in any platforms  e g   Windows  Linux and Mac OS X          Answer  1  Write your source code in   JAVA  Compile the source code once and   run it anywhere      Question  2  I want to create an application that I write source code once but there is no problem that I compile the source code for any platforms separately  e g   Windows  Linux and Mac OS X           Answer  2  Write your source code in C   or C    Use standard header files   only  Use a suitable compiler for any   platform  e g   Visual Studio for   Windows  GCC for Linux and XCode for   Mac   Note that you should not use any   advanced programming features to   compile your source code in all   platforms successfully  If you use   none C or C   standard classes or   functions  your source code does not   compile in other platforms      Question  3  In answer of question  2  it is difficult using different compiler for each platform  is there any cross platform compiler      Answer  3  Yes  Use GCC compiler  It   is a cross platform compiler  To   compile your source code in Windows   use MinGW that provides GCC compiler   for Windows and compiles your source   code to native Windows program  Do not   use any advanced programming features    like Windows API  to compile your   source code in all platforms   successfully  If you use Windows API   functions  your source code does not   compile in other platforms      Question  4  C or C   standard header files do not provide any advanced programming features like multi-threading  What can I do      Answer  4  You should use POSIX    Portable Operating System Interface    for UNIX   standard  It provides many   advanced programming features and   tools  Many operating systems fully or   partly POSIX compatible  like Mac OS   X  Solaris  BSD OS and       Some   operating systems while not officially   certified as POSIX compatible  conform   in large part  like Linux  FreeBSD    OpenSolaris and       Cygwin provides   a largely POSIX-compliant development   and run-time environment for Microsoft   Windows      Thus   To use advantage of GCC cross platform compiler in Windows  use MinGW   To use advantage of POSIX standard advanced programming features and tools in Windows  use Cygwin

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From the point of view of porting a C program  a good way to understand this is to take an example    include  lt sys stat h gt   include  lt stdlib h gt   int main void       struct stat stbuf     stat  c foo txt    amp stbuf      system  command       printf  Hello  World n       return 0      If we change stat to  stat  we can compile this program with Microsoft Visual C  We can also compile this program with MinGW  and with Cygwin   Under Microsoft Visual C  the program will be linked to a MSVC redistributable run-time library  mxvcrtnn dll  where nn is some version suffix  To ship this program we will have to include that DLL  That DLL provides  stat  system and printf   We also have the option of statically linking the run-time    Under MinGW  the program will be linked to msvcrt dll  which is an internal  undocumented  unversioned library that is part of Windows  and off-limits to application use  That library is essentially a fork of the redistributable run-time library from MS Visual C for use by Windows itself   Under both of these  the program will have similar behaviors    the stat function will return very limited information mdash no useful permissions or inode number  for instance  the path c file txt is resolved according to the current working directory associated with drive c    system uses cmd exe  c for running the external command    We can also compile the program under Cygwin  Similarly to the redistributable run-time used by MS Visual C  the Cygwin program will be linked to Cygwin s run-time libraries  cygwin1 dll  Cygwin proper  and cyggcc s-1 dll  GCC run-time support    Since Cygwin is now under the LGPL  we can package with our program  even if it isn t GPL-compatible free software  and ship the program   Under Cygwin  the library functions will behave differently    the stat function has rich functionality  returning meaningful values in most of the fields  the path c file txt is not understood at all as containing a drive letter reference  since c  isn t followed by a slash  The colon is considered part of the name and somehow mangled into it  There is no concept of a relative path against a volume or drive in Cygwin  no  currently logged drive  concept  and no per-drive current working directory  the system function tries to use the  bin sh -c interpreter  Cygwin will resolve the   path according to the location of your executable  and expect a sh exe program to be co-located with your executable    Both Cygwin and MinGW allow you to use Win32 functions  If you want to call MessageBox or CreateProcess  you can do that  You can also easily build a program which doesn t require a console window  using gcc -mwindows  under MinGW and Cygwin   Cygwin is not strictly POSIX  In addition to providing access to the Windows API  it also provides its own implementations of some Microsoft C functions  stuff found in msvcrt dll or the re-distributable msvcrtnn dll run-times   An example of this are the spawn  family of functions like spawnvp  These are a good idea to use instead of fork and exec on Cygwin since they map better to the Windows process creation model which has no concept of fork   Thus    Cygwin programs are no less  native  than MS Visual C programs on grounds of requiring the accompaniment of libraries  Programming language implementations on Windows are expected to provide their own run-time  even C language implementations  There is no  libc  on Windows for public use  The fact that MinGW requires no third-party DLL is actually a disadvantage  it is depending on an undocumented  Windows-internal fork of the Visual C run-time  MinGW does this because the GPL system library exception applies to msvcrt dll  which means that GPL-ed programs can be compiled and redistributed with MinGW  Due to its much broader and deeper support for POSIX compared to msvcrt dll  Cygwin is by far the superior environment for porting POSIX programs  Since it is now under the LGPL  it allows applications with all sorts of licenses  open or closed source  to be redistributed   Cygwin even contains VT100 emulation and termios  which work with the Microsoft console  A POSIX application that sets up raw mode with tcsetattr and uses VT100 codes to control the cursor will work right in the cmd exe window  As far as the end-user is concerned  it s a native console app making Win32 calls to control the console    However    As a native Windows development tool  Cygwin has some quirks  like path handling that is foreign to Windows  dependence on some hard-coded paths like  bin sh and other issues  These differences are what render Cygwin programs  non-native   If a program takes a path as an argument  or input from a dialog box  Windows users expect that path to work the same way as it does in other Windows programs   If it doesn t work that way  that s a problem    Plug  Shortly after the LGPL announcement  I started the Cygnal  Cygwin Native Application Library  project to provide a fork of the Cygwin DLL which aims to fix these issues   Programs can be developed under Cygwin  and then deployed with the Cygnal  version of cygwin1 dll without recompiling  As this library improves  it will gradually eliminate the need for MinGW   When Cygnal solves the path handling problem  it will be possible to develop a single executable which works with Windows paths when shipped as a Windows application with Cygnal  and seamlessly works with Cygwin paths when installed in your  usr bin under Cygwin   Under Cygwin  the executable will transparently work with a path like  cygdrive c Users bob  In the native deployment where it is linking against the Cygnal version of cygwin1 dll  that path will make no sense  whereas it will understand c foo txt

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Cygwin is an attempt to create  a complete UNIX POSIX environment on Windows  To do this it uses various DLLs  While these DLLs are covered by GPLv3   their license contains an exception that does not force a derived work to be covered by the GPLv3   MinGW is a C C   compiler suite which allows you to create Windows executables without dependency on such DLLs - you only need the normal MSVC runtimes  which are part of any normal Microsoft Windows installation   You can also get a small UNIX POSIX like environment  compiled with MinGW called MSYS  It doesn t have anywhere near all the features of Cygwin  but is ideal for programmers wanting to use MinGW

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Note that utility behaviour can genuinely vary between the two   For example  Cygwin tar can fork - because fork   is supported in the DLL - where the mingw version cannot   This is a problem when trying to compile mysql from source

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Cygwin is is a Unix-like environment and command-line interface for Microsoft Windows   Mingw is a native software port of the GNU Compiler Collection  GCC  to Microsoft Windows  along with a set of freely distributable import libraries and header files for the Windows API  MinGW allows developers to create native Microsoft Windows applications   You can run binaries generated with mingw without the cygwin environment  provided that all necessary libraries  DLLs  are present

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Don t overlook AT amp T s U Win software  which is designed to help you compile Unix applications on windows  last version - 2012-08-06  uses Eclipse Public License  Version 1 0    Like Cygwin they have to run against a library  in their case POSIX DLL   The AT amp T guys are terrific engineers  same group that brought you ksh and dot  and their stuff is worth checking out

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As a simplification  it s like this    Compile something in Cygwin and you are compiling it for Cygwin  Compile something in MinGW and you are compiling it for Windows    About Cygwin  The purpose of Cygwin is to make porting Unix-based applications to Windows much easier  by emulating many of the small details that Unix-based operating systems provide  and are documented by the POSIX standards   Your application can use Unix feature such as pipes  Unix-style file and directory access  and so forth  and it can be compiled with Cygwin which will act as a compatibility layer around your application  so that many of those Unix-specific paradigms can continue to be used   When you distribute your software  the recipient will need to run it along with the Cygwin run-time environment  provided by the file cygwin1 dll    You may distribute this with your software  but your software will have to comply with its open source license   It may even be the case that even just linking your software with it  but distributing the dll separately  may still require you to honor the open source license   About MinGW  MinGW aims to simply be a Windows port of the GNU compiler tools  such as GCC  Make  Bash  and so on   It does not attempt to emulate or provide comprehensive compatibility with Unix  but instead it provides the minimum necessary environment to use GCC  the GNU compiler  and a small number of other tools on Windows   It does not have a Unix emulation layer like Cygwin  but as a result your application needs to specifically be programmed to be able to run in Windows  which may mean significant alteration if it was created to rely on being run in a standard Unix environment and uses Unix-specific features such as those mentioned earlier   By default  code compiled in MinGW s GCC will compile to a native Windows X86 target  including  exe and  dll files  though you could also cross-compile with the right settings  since you are basically using the GNU compiler tools suite   MinGW is essentially an alternative to the Microsoft Visual C   compiler and its associated linking make tools   It may be possible in some cases to use MinGW to compile something that was intended for compiling with Microsoft Visual C    with the right libraries and in some cases with other modifications   MinGW includes some basic standard libraries for interacting with the Windows operating system  but as with the normal standard libraries included in the GNU compiler collection these don t impose licensing restrictions on software you have created   For non-trivial software applications  making them cross-platform can be a considerable challenge unless you use a comprehensive cross-platform framework   At the time I wrote this the Qt framework was one of the most popular for this purpose  allowing the building of graphical applications that work across operating systems including Windows  but there are other options too   If you use such a framework from the start  you can not only reduce your headaches when it comes time to port to another platform but you can use the same graphical widgets - windows  menus and controls - across all platforms if you re writing a GUI app  and have them appear native to the user

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To use Cygwin in a commercial   proprietary   non-open-source application  you ll need to fork out tens of thousands of dollars for a  license buyout  from Red Hat  this invalidates the standard licensing terms at a considerable cost  Google  cygwin license cost  and see first few results   For mingw  no such cost is incurred  and the licenses  PD  BSD  MIT  are extremely permissive  At most you may be expected to supply license details with your application  such as the winpthreads license required when using mingw64-tdm   EDIT thanks to Izzy Helianthus  The commercial license is no longer available or necessary because the API library found in the winsup subdirectory of Cygwin is now being distributed under the LGPL  as opposed to the full GPL

[windows] What is the difference between Cygwin and MinGW?

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