MinGW on 64 bit Windows?

I believe the "normal" MinGW doesn't support 64-bit, but there are other projects which do. This from a very cursory google search.

Yeah, 64-bit support for Windows wasn't available until recently. This is because not all the information needed to build 64-bit executables was available (did Microsoft ever publicly release the header format for 64-bit EXEs?).

I'm pretty sure it's been available for some time.

You can download the PE specification from Microsoft: here. This version from Feb 2008 includes supports for 64-bit executables. The document history says it was first created in 2006.

Here's a blog post from 2005 with various bits and pieces as well as links to MSDN on the 64-bit ABI/calling conventions/etc.

Thanks for the pointers! I am already painfully familiar with that Google search :) I have tried most of the 64-bit MinGW packages out there.

As far as I can tell, 64-bit MinGW development began in 2007 or even earlier. But it isn't anything near as full-featured as the 32-bit version. Even the current 64-bit project notes that things are only "mostly" working (mingw-w64 source forge).

For instance, there isn't any pthread support that I can find, and that's already a killer.

For now I think I'll stick to 32-bit Windows only. That means I'll have to shuffle machines a bit.

But I can look at the bright side: now I get to play with 64-bit Fedora!

-Thomas

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Original post by tomva For now I think I'll stick to 32-bit Windows only. That means I'll have to shuffle machines a bit.

You can still use the 32-bit MinGW on 64-bit Windows, you just can't compile 64-bit code.

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You can still use the 32-bit MinGW on 64-bit Windows, you just can't compile 64-bit code.

I had also heard that! But when I tried to compile things I got awkward results when running. Again, I had issues with pthread support, among others. Programs would compile, but then silently fail to run. Running under gdb, I could see that there were DLL resolution errors.

So I don't think even 32bit mingw is terribly stable under 64 bit Vista, which I don't understand.

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Original post by Codeka I'm pretty sure it's been available for some time. You can download the PE specification from Microsoft: here. This version from Feb 2008 includes supports for 64-bit executables. The document history says it was first created in 2006. Here's a blog post from 2005 with various bits and pieces as well as links to MSDN on the 64-bit ABI/calling conventions/etc.

Odd, I swear that the last year somebody I know tried to make a 64-bit program using MinGW and it didn't work (it built as 64-bit but using a 32-bit header). Maybe the support was there but it didn't generate useable programs yet. Meh.

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Odd, I swear that the last year somebody I know tried to make a 64-bit program using MinGW and it didn't work (it built as 64-bit but using a 32-bit header). Maybe the support was there but it didn't generate useable programs yet. Meh.

Well, it looks like Microsoft released details of the 64-bit EXE format in 2005, and work on 64-bit MinGW started seriously in 2007 or earlier.

But successful generation of 64-bit binaries is a recent MinGW accomplishment, and they still don't have anything like the feature set of the 32 bit MinGW.

Also, even 32-bit compilation can have issues on 64-bit machines.

I think MinGW will get there. But it's not something I can dive into right now myself, and I need more features (such as pthreads) than even 32-bit MinGW can support on 64-bit Windows. So I'll stick to 32-bit Windows and MinGW.