Eclipse Ganymede and MinGW in Windows

Question

I'm trying to get eclipse to work with MinGW. I've done the following:

• Downloaded CDT for eclipse.
• Installed MinGW.
• Added C:\MinGW\bin to my path.
  Opening a command prompt (CMD) and typing g++ or alike works fine.
• I run eclipse, create a "New C++ Project", and only get the option saying "other toolchains".

There's a MILLION tutorials out there saying eclipse should identify MinGW on its own. It doesn't, and I don't know what to do. I've tried reinstalling everying in just about every order posible. Still no luck.

I've also noted some tutorials say something about creating a "Managed C++ Project". I've no such option, all I get is "C++ Project" and "C Project"

edit: I have eclipse ganymede, windows x86_64, version 3.4.2
http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/downloads/drops/R-3.4.2-200902111700/index.php

Running the "Eclipse IDE for C/C++ developers" fails, since there's no x64 version for windows. The x86 version requires x86 JAVA installed as well, and installing two versions of java, gave nothing but trouble in the past.

Answer 1

The distrinction between managed make projects and makefile project was removed in CDT 4.x, I think. Now there is only one type of project, but you can select different builders. CDT includes an internal builder which does not use makefiles and another one which does.

First, save yourself the effort of "reinstalling in every order possible". That is also known as trial-and-error, and will only make you more frustrated. Apply the normal problem-solving skills you have as a programmer.

Given that you have MinGW installed, what happens if you download "Eclipse IDE for C/C++ developers", start eclipse.exe, and try to create a C++-project with a MinGW toolchain?

EDIT: remember: the key in getting help with problems like these is to produce a minimal example which fails. Also, it would help if you provided URLs to the packages you installed (MinGW, Eclipse, etc.).

EDIT: I just installed CDT using the Ganymede update site, downloaded and installed MinGW from here, and restarted Eclipse, and everything worked fine. I know that doesn't help you, but it does prove that the toolchain detection isn't completely broken. Something is weird on your side.

Answer 2

The instructions for setting up MinGW in Ganymede are located here.

The following are instructions and links on how to install the current version of MinGW. Note that these links may become inaccurate over time as new versions of MinGW components are introduced. Please check the MinGW File Release section for the latest versions.

1. Download and run the MinGW setup program, MinGW-5.1.3.exe.

2. Select download and install the MinGW base tools and the g++ compiler. You may select the Current or Candidate version of these tools. You may also install any of the other available compilers as well.

   Do not install the MinGW Make feature as the MSYS version of make from step 5 is a more complete implementation of make.

3. The MinGW setup program currently does not install the gdb debugger. To install the debugger, download the file from the following location: gdb-6.6.tar.bz2
4. Extract the contents of the file gdb-6.6.tar.bz2 to the same location where you installed MinGW.
5. If you want to use Makefile projects, download and run the setup program from the following location: MSYS-1.0.10.exe. MSYS provides an implementation of make and related command line tools. This is not required for other types of projects with the MinGW toolchain, which use CDT's internal build tools to perform the build.

Following this process resolved any problems I had.

Answer 3

You could try Wascana Desktop Developer. Its a distribution of Eclipse CDT configured specifically for developing on Windows.

Answer 4

I had the same problem (i.e. Eclipse not finding MinGW on the PATH) after I removed some of the unused files/folders from MinGW. It was ~600 MB and I was tasked to trim it down before adding to source control. I got it down to a workable ~200 MB. When I tried to re-create an Eclipse workspace afterwards, MinGW disappeared from available toolchains. It reappeared after I put the original MinGW install on the path.

HTH

Answer 5

I had the same exact problem with Eclipse Galileo and CDT 6.0.1. It turns out that CDT only recognized MinGW when it's located under c:\mingw. I had it in c:\msys\mingw so that was the problem. After I changed that everything worked fine.