Table of Contents
How to install MinGW and an example of Fortran compilation using MinGW
1. Description
MinGW means Minimalist GNU for Windows. It is a minimalist development environment for native Microsoft Windows applications (see https://www.mingw.org/).
MinGW is used in Capsis to generate executables from Fortran, C, C++, … source files to be run on Windows operating systems. These executables are used in some Capsis modules. It is for example the case with the genotype_generator.f90 Fortran source file which corresponding executable is called by the Luberon2 module.
2. Installation
2.1. Installation of MinGW
MinGW can be installed by using the following steps:
- Go to https://www.mingw.org/.
- Click on
Downloads
tab at the top of the page or go directly to https://osdn.net/projects/mingw/releases/. - Click on the button allowing to download the mingw-get-setup.exe file.
- When downloaded, double-click on mingw-get-setup.exe in order to launch the MinGW installer.
- In the first window, click on
Install
button. - On the Step 1: Specify Installation Preferences window, choose the installation directory (C:\MinGW by default), let the checked options and click on
Continue
button. - You access the Step 2: Download and Set Up MinGW Installation Manager window. When download progress is completed, click on
Continue
button. - You access the MinGW Installation Manager window. You have choice between Basic Setup and All Packages installations. Choose Basic Setup and install all the proposed packages (for each package, click on it and select Mark for Installation). The packages to be marked for installation are: mingw-developer-toolkit-bin, mingw32-base-bin, mingw32-gcc-ada-bin, mingw32-gcc-fortran-bin, mingw32-gcc-g++-bin, mingw32-gcc-objc-bin and msys-base-bin.
- When all packages have been marked, click on
Installation
at the top of the window, then click onApply Changes
and at least click onApply
button on the opening window. - The download of packages begins. When all the packages have been successfully downloaded, click on the
Close
button and close the MinGW Installation Manager window.
Remark: if some dll files are not found during packages download process, they can be found here : https://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/OldFiles/ contained in .tar.xz files that can be uncompressed. The missing dll files have to be copied in the bin sub directory of the installed MinGW directory.
2.2. Configuration of the Path environment variable
In order the system knows where to find the executables contained in the installed MinGW directory, you have to modify the Path system environment variable. To do that (example on Windows 7):
- Click on
Configuration panel
then onSytem and security
and at least onSystem
. - Click on
Advanced system parameters
. - In the System properties opening window, click on the
Environment variables
button. - In the System variables section of the opening Environment variables window, click on the Path variable and then click on the
Modify
button. Add at the beginning of the Path variable the path to the bin sub directory of the installed MinGW directory (for example C:\MinGW\bin) ended with a “;” (; is the separator of the different paths stored in the Path environment variable) and click on theOK
button. - Click on
OK
button to close the Environment variable window and again onOK
button to close theSystem properties
window.
3. Example of Fortran compilation
Instructions for compiling the genotype_generator.f90 source file (Fortran 90 code called from Luberon2 module) using the gfortran executable stored in the bin sub directory from the MinGW installed directory (example: C:\MinGW\bin) are:
- Open a prompt (type
cmd
in the Search programs and files section). - Go in the directory where genotype_generator.f90 source file is stored.
- Type the following compilation command to generate the genotype_generator.exe executable file:
gfortran genotype_generator.f90 -o genotype_generator.exe