Version 13.3.0-1 is a new release; it follows the official GNU GCC release.

The xPack MinGW-w64 GCC is a standalone cross-platform binary distribution of Mingw-w64 GCC.

There are separate binaries for Windows (x64), macOS (x64, arm64) and GNU/Linux (x64, arm64 and arm).

Download

The binary files are available from GitHub Releases.

Prerequisites

  • x64 GNU/Linux: any system with GLIBC 2.27 or higher (like Ubuntu 18 or later, Debian 10 or later, RedHat 8 or later, Fedora 29 or later, etc)
  • arm64/arm GNU/Linux: any system with GLIBC 2.27 or higher (like Raspberry Pi OS, Ubuntu 18 or later, Debian 10 or later, RedHat 8 or later, Fedora 29 or later, etc)
  • x64 Windows: Windows 7 with the Universal C Runtime (UCRT), Windows 8, Windows 10
  • x64 macOS: 10.13 or later
  • arm64 macOS: 11.6 or later

Install

The full details of installing the xPack MinGW-w64 GCC on various platforms are presented in the separate Install page.

Easy install

The easiest way to install GCC is with xpm by using the binary xPack, available as @xpack-dev-tools/mingw-w64-gcc from the npmjs.com registry.

With the xpm tool available, installing the latest version of the package and adding it as a development dependency for a project is quite easy:

cd my-project
xpm init # Add a package.json if not already present

xpm install @xpack-dev-tools/mingw-w64-gcc@latest --verbose

ls -l xpacks/.bin

To install this specific version, use:

xpm install @xpack-dev-tools/mingw-w64-gcc@13.3.0-1.1 --verbose

It is also possible to install Meson Build globally, in the user home folder, but this requires xPack aware tools to automatically identify them and manage paths.

xpm install --global @xpack-dev-tools/mingw-w64-gcc@latest --verbose

Uninstall

To remove the links created by xpm in the current project:

cd my-project

xpm uninstall @xpack-dev-tools/mingw-w64-gcc

To completely remove the package from the central xPack store:

xpm uninstall --global @xpack-dev-tools/mingw-w64-gcc

Compliance

The xPack MinGW-w64 GCC generally follows the official GCC releases.

The current version is based on:

  • GCC version 13.3.0 from 21 May 2024;
  • binutils version 2.42 from 29 Jan 2024
  • MinGW-w64 version 12.0.0

Supported languages

The supported languages are:

  • C
  • C++
  • Fortran
  • Obj-C
  • Obj-C++
  • Fortran

Note: Obj-C/C++ support is minimalistic.

Changes

Compared to the upstream, there are no functional changes.

Bug fixes

  • none

Enhancements

  • none

Known problems

Please see the separate tests results page.

Shared libraries

On all platforms the packages are standalone, and expect only the standard runtime to be present on the host.

All dependencies that are build as shared libraries are copied locally in the libexec folder (or in the same folder as the executable for Windows).

-static-libgcc -static-libstdc++

To avoid issues with DLLs, specific when using toolchains installed in custom locations, it is highly recommended to use only the static versions of the GCC libraries.

For C programs, append -static-libgcc to the linker line.

For C++ programs, since the toolchain is configured to use POSIX threads, instead of -static-libstdc++, use the more explicit variant -Wl,-Bstatic,-lstdc++,-lpthread,-Bdynamic when invoking the linker.

DT_RPATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH

On GNU/Linux the binaries are adjusted to use a relative path:

$ readelf -d library.so | grep runpath
 0x000000000000001d (RPATH)            Library rpath: [$ORIGIN]

In the GNU ld.so search strategy, the DT_RPATH has the highest priority, higher than LD_LIBRARY_PATH, so if this later one is set in the environment, it should not interfere with the xPack binaries.

Please note that previous versions, up to mid-2020, used DT_RUNPATH, which has a priority lower than LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and does not tolerate setting it in the environment.

@rpath and @loader_path

Similarly, on macOS, the binaries are adjusted with install_name_tool to use a relative path.

Documentation

To save space and bandwidth, the original GNU GCC documentation is available online.

Build

The binaries for all supported platforms (Windows, macOS and GNU/Linux) were built using the xPack Build Box (XBB), a set of build environments based on slightly older distributions, that should be compatible with most recent systems.

For the prerequisites and more details on the build procedure, please see the How to build page.

CI tests

Before publishing, a set of simple tests were performed on an exhaustive set of platforms. The results are available from:

Tests

The binaries were tested on a variety of platforms, but mainly to check the integrity of the build, not the compiler functionality.

Checksums

The SHA-256 hashes for the files are:

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xpack-mingw-w64-gcc-13.3.0-1-darwin-arm64.tar.gz

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xpack-mingw-w64-gcc-13.3.0-1-darwin-x64.tar.gz

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xpack-mingw-w64-gcc-13.3.0-1-linux-arm.tar.gz

8d631d755b4ea228040ebbe6b0ca29090cb830ebcde0ec7dde4ab2ec22f1d602
xpack-mingw-w64-gcc-13.3.0-1-linux-arm64.tar.gz

ecc36da54f05d49d939bb29a2847674a6cb9722afeb422892e6224b96e63e7dd
xpack-mingw-w64-gcc-13.3.0-1-linux-x64.tar.gz

472df36af812441015e6ebd3277659ac62be8a1d4396d1363dfeef806046f9ec
xpack-mingw-w64-gcc-13.3.0-1-win32-x64.zip

Deprecation notices

GNU/Linux minimum requirements

The minimum requirement is GLIBC 2.27, available starting with Ubuntu 18, Debian 10 and RedHat 8. Support for RedHat 7 was dropped in 2022.

32-bit support

Support for 32-bit x86 GNU/Linux and x86 Windows was dropped in 2022.

Pre-deprecation notice for 32-bit Arm GNU/Linux

Due to the large user base of 32-bit Raspberry Pi systems, Support for 32-bit Arm GNU/Linux (armv7l) will be preserved for a little while, but expect it to be dropped by 2025, so it is recommended to consider an upgrade to a RPi 4 or 5 with at least 4 GB (preferably 8 GB) of RAM.

Pre-deprecation notice for Ubuntu 18.04

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver reached the end of the standard five-year maintenance window for Long-Term Support (LTS) release on 31 May 2023.

As a courtesy, the xPack GNU/Linux releases will continue to be based on Ubuntu 18.04 for another year.

From 2025 onwards, the GNU/Linux binaries will be built on Debian 10, (GLIBC 2.28), and are also expected to run on RedHat 8.

Users are urged to update their build and test infrastructure to ensure a smooth transition to the next xPack releases.

Download analytics

Credit to Shields IO for the badges and to Somsubhra/github-release-stats for the individual file counters.