This guide describes how to build a custom mingw/msys development environment for win32. The goal is to create a set of matching libraries that can be used to build your own programs, with SDL and GTK as primary SDKs.
The directory structure emulates a traditional UNIX system with msys installation and the mingw compiler as base system in /usr, additional binaries in /opt and our own packages in /usr/local.
The guide was inspired by the Linux from Scratch way of working. If you have experience with building packages on Linux building an msys environment should feel familiar.
This is a work in progress. Building a MinGW based system is a time-comsuming operation: while building, a lot of subtle bugs and win32 incompatibilities are exposed. Finding workarounds for each of them can be a daunting task. I tried to document all the hacks and provided shell commands you can copy paste into your terminal window.
Last updated: 2012-05-16
Part 1: Setting up the base system
Part 2: Building local packages
Part 3: Building GTK
Part 4: Building additional tools
Part 5: Building projects