I'm running windows XP.
I have been following this tutorial and so downloading mingw-get-inst here.
I've done this a couple times and the last time I checked boes to install EVERYTHING including, but not limited to, gcc, g++, MSYS and the MinGW Compiling Suite. I told it to make a program menu shortcut, too.
I believe I have correctly added MinGW/bin to the Environment Settings' Path.
So I have the shortcut to the MSYS shell now. It goes to C:\MinGW\msys\1.0\msys.bat, but the whole msys directory does not exist!
There are tons of "packages" have been downloaded as far as I can tell ("mingw-get show" brings up a lot!), but it doesn't seem like any of it installed correctly.
Also, should I be able to use commands like "g++ foo.cpp -o foo.exe" from cmd.exe or only from the MSYS shell? Because I was unable to use cmd.exe.
Please help!
The MSYS and MinGW installation procedure is a nightmare, and has got worse over the years. If you just want the compiler suite (no UNIX tools like sed, grep), then I suggest you go to Twilight Dragon Media and download GCC from there. If you also want all the tools, including the Bash shell, the easiest way I've found to get them is to install Git for Windows (which you may want anyway), which includes them all. And if you want a C++ IDE that works well with GCC, take a look at Code::Blocks.
What is the result of running, at a cmd.exe prompt, the command echo %Path%? It should (given what you wrote about your system) include “C:\MinGW\bin”—does it?
What is the result of running dir C:\MinGW?
Note that mingw-get show shows details of available packages—those mingw-get knows how to download and install. The installer is a bit primitive, but has gotten better over the last year or so.
If you issue the command $ echo $PATH, you'll notice it contains /mingw/bin But the /mingw directory is unavailable. To mount it, edit the MSYS fstab, adding a line like C:\MinGW /mingw For details, see the MingW Getting Started guide, more specifically section "After Installing You Should..."
You only need to add MinGW/bin to the Windows' Environment Settings' Path if you plan to use MingW's executables outside of MSYS.
来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5953307/getting-mingw-get-to-install-correctly-mingw-msys-path-missing-plus-more