I want to start a long-lasting thread that could gather info on choosing a GCC compiler — including information on GCC updates.
* [MinGW.org](http://www.mingw.org/) * [MinGW-w64.org](http://mingw-w64.org/) * [TDM-GCC](http://tdm-gcc.tdragon.net/) * [GCC.GNU.org](https://gcc.gnu.org/) I've more than once found suggestions that using TDM-GCC has advantages over MinGW. I've installed TDM-GCC x64, and so far so good it's working fine, but admitedly it comes with a rather old version of GCC: 5.1.0! Currently, official GCC is in v6.3 [2016-12-21]. TDM-GCC was last updated in July 2015, and ships with GCC v5.1.0. But what about MinGW? I find it confusing that there two separate MinGW projects, and from what I understood there isn't much comunication between the two projects (for historical reasons). My guess is that MinGW-w64 is presently the most widely used version, but I find its website (both actually) not so friendly to the "uninitiated" \--- I've spent quite some time reading through it, doing research and taking notes, but when it comes to choose which package to download I'm never quite sure about. Currently, MinGW-x64 lateste release is v5.0.1 (2017-01-06). Does the 5.0.1 point to the GCC version? If so, it would mean that it lags behind TDM-GCC by one minor version. I would also like to see here some explanation of the advantages of TDM-GCC over MinGW — ie: that was in 2015, are these advantages still relevant today, or do the new versions of MinGW64 already solve the issues that TDM-GCC proposed to solve? Was the TDM-GCCproject abbandoned because its reasons d'etre ceased to be due to some changes in MinGW64? If I've understood correctly, one of the main advantages of TDM-GCC was that your final compiled binaries would need no dependencies (MinGW DLL's, etc). Is that right? Is it still so with current versions of MinGW? Can someone provide here some more information about similar issues, and also explain better which version of MinGW/GCC Nim setup for Windows offers to install. Hopefully this thread could become a reference to dissipate confusion regarding GCC on Windows, for Nim. I could even edit this post as new packages are released, so that the the head of the thread always provides updated info.
