MinGW Portable Development Test 6b (formerly MSYS Portable)

OK, some random notes as I think of them/notice them, in no particular order:

This should really be called MinGW Portable. MSYS is really mostly irrelevant. X:\PortableApps\MinGWPortable will be used by Code::Blocks Portable and other IDEs as well (which I'm working on). Being MSYSPortable would spoil it in the extreme. Because it's not MSYS. It's MinGW32/MinGW. MSYS is just an RXVT client which uses MinGW to "emulate" linux if you like.

I suggest that you do what I was going to do, which is have an INI switch to select MSYS or a Command Prompt with the MinGW bin directory in the PATH.

I'll look at this when I can download and test it.

Version number? Installer is MSYS_Portable_0.0.1.paf.exe, this should be MinGW_Portable_5.1.4_Development_Test_1.paf.exe (I think that the right version number is 5.1.4?)

You really shouldn't use versions of things which you compiled if you can avoid it, which you can.

Development is the right category.

This new DT should be good, I'll test it soon.

Nice going

I noticed that it was more than twice as big as my previous MinGW package, so I decided to find out why.

You've got ADA and Java support built in, but that's not the nub.

You haven't compressed the app with UPX! You should try compressing it with the PortableApps.com AppCompactor.

Using NRV2E and recompressing ZIP/JARs:
Size Before: 197622 KB
Size After: 149869 KB
Space Saved: 47753 KB

As you can see, this has taken it down to 75.8% of the original size.

However, where this is not so good is in the installer. Before, it's 26.1 MB. After, it's 36.8 MB. 41% larger. But that's one of the trade-offs you have to make.

Then I found a few minor issues with the rest of the package:

Your next installer filename should MinGW_Portable_1.0.10_Development_Test_3.paf.exe (assuming 1.0.10 is the version number you decide to use... the whole thing is a bit messy).

The launchers should both have "1.6.1.0" as their version numbers - that's the PortableApps.com Launcher version number at the moment.

In AppInfo you've got a few issues: the CMD version should be "Command Prompt Portable (MinGW)" (space between Command and Prompt), and MSYSPortable.ico should be appicon1.ico, and CommandPromptPortable.ico should be appicon2.ico.

Edit: in CommandPromptPortable.nsi, you should change PORTABLEAPPNAME to "Command Prompt Portable (MinGW)" and APPNAME to "MinGW", and on lines 89-92, you should change the following:

	;Set New Path
		ReadEnvStr $PATHENV "PATH"
		StrCpy $PATHENV `$PATHENV;"$EXEDIR\App\MinGW\bin`
		System::Call 'Kernel32::SetEnvironmentVariableA(t, t) i("PATH", "$PATHENV").r0'

To the following:

	;===Put MinGW into the PATH
		ReadEnvStr $0 "PATH"
		System::Call 'Kernel32::SetEnvironmentVariableA(t, t) i("PATH", "$EXEDIR\App\MinGW\bin;$0").n'

And then you can scrap the "Var PATHENV" line, and not waste a 16 or so bytes of memory by getting $2 filled by the SetEnvironmentVariableA call (that's the turning r0 into n bit)

I've just installed this. I haven't any bugs to file, just wanted to say thank you--it appears to be an excellent app and I've been looking for something like this for a long time.

Richard

Works very nicely. Thanks for this.

Do you have a newer version with gcc 4?
Also I tried in several computers/folders and this not seems to work when the folder where I have it has spaces in the name
(like c:\Documents and Setting\XXX\...)

Thanks for providing this.

It doesn't seem to be able to start up.
I am under the impression that mingw-shell is the start program (there are no others in the MinGWPortable folder).
Using Windows XP, and MinGW Portable Development Test 6.
Perhaps there is a working older version I can use?

make doesn't seem to be represent/working. Is this known? Or is it just part of msys? If yes, how long before a release?

Created an account just to say thanks! I appreciate your work on this and I really appreciate you keeping it updated. Again, thanks!

When I change the original path of MinGW Portable
the path change to /MinGW instead of \CommonFiles\MinGW
please fix it!
you did great Job,
hope to see it in Release apps!
thx tal

Bumpety-bump. Any updates? How stable is it at this point?
Thanks for your work

you can add also 64bit version.
thanks a lot for your hard work.

http://mingw-w64.sourceforge.net/

Tal.

Hi sar3th (and guys :)),

I hope I'm not being presumptious with this, but I have posted an MSYS Portable release which I have been working with on my own setup for the last few weeks. I have tested it on a few systems, but would like your help and/or advice looking at how it works in general. sar3th, I know you mentioned an upcoming MSYS Portable release, but as I haven't seen much action here recently, I have posted the version which I am currently using for portable development, in the hope that it will garner some interest.

MSYS Portable 1.10.11 Development Test 1

Please give it a go, mention anything that breaks or doesn't work for your setup, and perhaps, alongside sar3th's MinGW, we can get an official release sometime soon.

Cheers

PS Loving the work being done here guys. I now run almost all my apps portably thanks to the hard work done here!

I successfully used mingw-get to download and install a couple of packages, but they install in /mingw/msys/1.0/bin. The msys shell does not find them, and if I add that to the path, any attempt to run them just hangs the shell. What am I doing wrong?

Also, is there any package for fmt and rsync?

Thanks,

John

I think it's great that this is now kept separate from MSYS. This allows those of us that already maintain a portable full Cygwin setup to make use of its much wider range of tools - full POSIX environment, but take advantage of an up to date non-cygwin.dll build toolchain.

If all you want to do is make/compile etc, then MSYS is fine, easier and smaller.

MinGW will work fine with either - just google for howtos - this isn't the place to ask how to use the tools generally, just on portability issues - which there shouldn't be any with these types of tools anyway, just incorporate environment variable manipulation into your script/batch launchers.

If you don't know how to do that, this still isn't the place to learn - google is your friend.

To the developer - a suggestion for this page. It's quite difficult to determine from this how up to date this package is {today} as a variable, not 20111222.

Please post a message along the lines of "this package gives you the same versions as those available from the upstreams download site as of {date}".

That way once we've installed your portable package, we can decide whether or not we want to overlay binaries available elsewhere (or build ourselves now that we can?) for some reason.

Thanks

Can you update this?
thx

The download link supplied gives an error 500.

OK, thanks.

can you update?
mingw-get-0.5

thanks for your work.
Tal.

I do some research,
I read here for this:
how-to-update-to-mingw-gcc-4-8-2
and i find out that there is more new mingw ->
MinGW-w64 GCC for both x64 & x86 Windows
with gcc 4.8.2
I try sjlj build with the latest release
MinGW-w64 sjlj build
maybe other build is better, i didn't try.
anyway, i managed to create a portable mingw with gcc 4.8.2, compatible to windows 8.

if you can update for this version, i will be glad,
if not, and it o.k. from you, i will start a new fork of mingw portable.

hope that information is help.
Tal.

http://sar3th.kicks-ass.net/downloads/PortableApps/MinGWPortable/MinGW_P...
I cannot see this server.

Hi there

Is this still being maintained? None of the d/l links at the top or the most recent here at the bottom work. Would be great if someone could provide a working link