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Okay, but that just seems to be perpetuating the misunderstanding of what MSYS2 is intended for.

It gives you a *nix-like shell/dev environment and tools, but you build native software that runs on Windows systems that don’t have or need to have all/parts of MSYS2/Cygwin installed.

michaelsbradley 8 hours ago [ - ]

Example:

I built a network daemon using the MSYS2 CLANG64 environment and llvm toolchain on Windows 10.

Windows 7 x64 users could download the compiled single-file executable and run it just fine, so long as they installed Microsoft’s Universal C Runtime, which is a free download from Microsoft’s website.

delta_p_delta_x 8 hours ago [ - ]

> MSYS2 CLANG64

I get your point. Although my point is that there is actually zero need for MSYS at all for this, even as a developer, and especially not with the 'CLANG64' environment. These binaries themselves are built to run in the MSYS2 environment This is how I cross-compile from Windows... to Windows with LLVM-MinGW[1]:

  > (gci Env:PATH).Value.Split(';') | sort
  > clang-21.exe --version
  clang version 21.1.2 (https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project.git b708aea0bc7127adf4ec643660699c8bcdde1273)
  Target: x86_64-w64-windows-gnu
  Thread model: posix
  InstalledDir: C:/Users/dpdx/AppData/Local/Microsoft/WinGet/Packages/MartinStorsjo.LLVM-MinGW.UCRT_Microsoft.Winget.Source_8wekyb3d8bbwe/llvm-mingw-20250924-ucrt-x86_64/bin
  Configuration file: C:/Users/dpdx/AppData/Local/Microsoft/WinGet/Packages/MartinStorsjo.LLVM-MinGW.UCRT_Microsoft.Winget.Source_8wekyb3d8bbwe/llvm-mingw-20250924-ucrt-x86_64/bin/x86_64-w64-windows-gnu.cfg

[1]: https://github.com/mstorsjo/llvm-mingw

michaelsbradley 5 hours ago [ - ]

I think you have it backwards, but I may misunderstand what you're saying.

I'm certain I haven't misunderstood the point of MSYS2's CLANG64 and other environments.

> These binaries themselves are built to run in the MSYS2 environment

I'm not sure if you're referring to the toolchain binaries or the binaries one produce's with them.

The CLANG64, etc. environments are 100% absolutely for certain for building software that can run outside of any MSYS2 environment!

You can, of course, build executables specifically intended to run inside those environments, but that’s not the primary use case.

> (gci Env:PATH).Value.Split(';') | sort

I don't want to use PowerShell or Cmd.exe when doing dev stuff on Windows. I want to do CLI work and author scripts in and for modern Bash, just like I would for Linux and macOS. I want to write Makefiles for GNU make, just like...

Now, sometimes there are bumps and sharp edges you have to deal with via `if [[ -v MSYSTEM ]]; then`, similar in Makefile, cygpath conversion, template/conditional code in sources, and so on. But that's a small price to pay, from my perspective, for staying in the same mental model for how to build software.

reactordev an hour ago [ - ]

All msys2 does is give you a unified BSD experience and toolchain for compiling applications for any architecture and platform. Windows included.

There. I think that sums it up.