niXman's builds are great.
I just wish niXman was still building GCC versions with sjlj exception handling. Yeah, SEH is compatible with Windows DLLs, and both SEH and Dwarf are faster, but GCC with sjlj EH allows the programmer to build either 64-bit OR 32-bit executables with the same compiler. One cannot do that with an SEH or Dwarf compiler on Windows.
(I've recently started putting mstorsjo's LLVM-MinGW builds (https://github.com/mstorsjo/llvm-mingw) on my software toolkit thumbdrive because it does allow both 64-bit and 32-bit compilation.)
Re UCRT:
UCRT is the wave of the future for Windows Run Time Library support. GCC on Windows has historically relied on MSVCRT.DLL, which is NOT officially a part of Windows (as Microsoft has long pointed out).
MS does not add new features to MSVCRT.DLL, so MSVCRT has not kept up with the growth of modern C/C++. Modern compilers must provide their own library functions to fill in the gaps in MSVCRT.
UCRT was introduced with Windows 10 as an official component of Windows going forward, well, at least until MS executives come up with their next brilliant plan for the future.
Folks using older versions of Windows may have to download & install UCRT themselves.
Surprisingly, UCRT is currently available for Windows versions going back to Vista. I say "currently" because we all know how MS prefers to abandon older Windows versions.
I'm not aware of any statements from MS on the subject, but the creation of UCRT as an official part of Windows implies to me that MS may be planning to "disappear" MSVCRT in the near future.
I just wish niXman was still building GCC versions with sjlj exception handling. Yeah, SEH is compatible with Windows DLLs, and both SEH and Dwarf are faster, but GCC with sjlj EH allows the programmer to build either 64-bit OR 32-bit executables with the same compiler. One cannot do that with an SEH or Dwarf compiler on Windows.
(I've recently started putting mstorsjo's LLVM-MinGW builds (https://github.com/mstorsjo/llvm-mingw) on my software toolkit thumbdrive because it does allow both 64-bit and 32-bit compilation.)
Re UCRT:
UCRT is the wave of the future for Windows Run Time Library support. GCC on Windows has historically relied on MSVCRT.DLL, which is NOT officially a part of Windows (as Microsoft has long pointed out).
MS does not add new features to MSVCRT.DLL, so MSVCRT has not kept up with the growth of modern C/C++. Modern compilers must provide their own library functions to fill in the gaps in MSVCRT.
UCRT was introduced with Windows 10 as an official component of Windows going forward, well, at least until MS executives come up with their next brilliant plan for the future.
Folks using older versions of Windows may have to download & install UCRT themselves.
Surprisingly, UCRT is currently available for Windows versions going back to Vista. I say "currently" because we all know how MS prefers to abandon older Windows versions.
I'm not aware of any statements from MS on the subject, but the creation of UCRT as an official part of Windows implies to me that MS may be planning to "disappear" MSVCRT in the near future.