MinGW or Mingw32 (Minimalist GNU for Microsoft Windows) is a software port of the GNU toolchain to the Win32 platform. It was originally a fork of Cygwin. Unlike Cygwin, it does not require a compatibility layer Dynamic-Link Library, nor does its license require that applications developed with it are released under a free software license.

MinGW includes a set of Windows header files (Windows API) for native Win32 development.

MinGW is usually used together with MSYS (Minimal SYStem), a lightweight environment derived from Cygwin that provides a unix-like shell in which configure scripts can be run.

=xmingw=

xmingw is a port of mingw to Linux, mainly used to crosscompile Windows programs on Linux.

=External links=