Last Update: 6/20/2024.
For development using GNU tools in a Microsoft Windows environment there are two common paths.
There is the MSYS2 distribution.
MSYS2 is commonly referred to as the “Minimal System 2” software collection for development on the Microsoft Windows platform.
- MSYS2 link
This is a “collection” of components (libraries and tools) They are built to coexist and support the whole. The individuals tools are not necessarily standalone projects. For example RM.EXE is linked to “msys_1.0.dll”. So you probably are going to want to use the entire package or wisely pick all the supporting components (tools and libraries) for a particular command line tool..
There is the GNUWIN32 distribution:
The GNUWIN32 distribution is a collection of common Unix tools brought to the Microsoft Windows environment. The repository is hosted by SourceForge – a web based Source Code Repository for Open Source Software (OSS). This can very much be an ale-carte system. Tools can be selected/found from a common list of packages.
https://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages.html
Example: Make package
Make, for example, is a common tool used for automating and standardizing project builds.
- https://www.gnu.org/software/make/
- https://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/make.html
- make-3.81-bin.zip
COREUTILS:
coreutils – is a common collection of text, file, and shell utilities which are presumed to exist. In development terms, after booting a system. One would presume to have a basic, or core, set of tools to start from. This would include everything from copying files and manipulating filesysetms (cp, dir, mkdir), to deeper file analysis (cat, tail, sum, wc) to shell operations like (su, tee, uname, whoami)
- https://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/coreutils.htm
- coreutils-5.3.0-bin.zip