[SOLVED] What is the Mingw64 folder inside the MSYS2 installation?

Issue

On Windows I'm trying to use MSYS2 to install Cmake and the FLTK library and from what I found online I should open a mingw64 shell window where I should install Cmake with the command:

pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake

My questions are:

1. What is the mingw64 folder inside the MSYS2 installation? (C:\msys64\mingw64) It's another Mingw64 compiler? I already have Mingw64 installed separately on the path C:\mingw-w64 and I'd prefer to keep this one and remove the one from MSYS2 subfolder. How do I do that?

2. What is the mingw64 shell and why should I open it when I run the cmake command?

3. I also installed separately CMake on C:\Program Files\CMake. Should I keep it there or should I install it on MSYS2 folder?

Thanks for taking the time to answer!

Solution

Mingw64 is one of the subsystems that comes with MSYS2. If you want to use MSYS2 to install software like cmake, then you need to use the full MSYS2 subsystem environment.

Every subsystem has an associated "shell", which is essentially a set of environment variables that allow the subsystems to co-operate properly. These shells can be invoked using launchers in the MSYS2 installation directory. The launchers set the MSYSTEM variable and open a terminal window (mintty) with a proper shell (bash).

Answered By - Dan Yeaw