How to obtain older versions of packages using MSYS2?

windows gcc mingw package-managers msys2

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No, MSYS2 does not directly support installing old versions of packages. Here are some things you can do though:

Look at http://repo.msys2.org/ to see if the version you are looking for happens to still be on the server. It will be deleted eventually but you might get lucky. You can download it and then install it with pacman -U filename.tar.xz
The repositories https://github.com/Alexpux/MINGW-packages and https://github.com/Alexpux/MSYS2-packages have the build scripts for all the MSYS2 packages so you could look in their version history to find the script for building the package you are interested in.

GCC is one of the harder packages to build and work with so it might be difficult for you to compile it from source. Also beware that the C++ ABI changed between GCC 4 and 5 or something like that, so binaries you build with the old GCC might not work with any of the MSYS2 C++ shared libraries compiled with GCC 5.

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Author by

Andy

All of the snippets of code I post are dedicated to the Public Domain and thus not affected by copyright of any kind. You have my full permission to use them in any fitting way. OO/PHP/Java web programmer, software engineer and a team leader with passion for Java, JavaScript, C#, C, C++, Clojure, VCS and general programming approach. Testability is everything, SOLID is one of the greatest things to come to OOP, turning software development into a passionate game of doing it the right way. Favourite programming literature Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler Continuous Integration by Paul M. Duvall Enterprise Integration Patterns by Gregor Hohpe Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship by Uncle Bob Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software by Eric Evans All of the books above provide an outlook on either software development or integration in terms of reusable principles, which are not limited to specific languages. In its core, all OO languages are pretty much the same, only the syntax is different - some languages are a bit harder to grasp, but once you learn how to correctly make software in Java, you should have close to none issues to move to a different OO language, such as C#. When working with people, I prefer to collaborate with those who know the general approach, rather than being limited to the syntax of their language of choice.

Updated on June 11, 2022

Comments

Andy almost 2 years

I decided to try CLion for Windows, which recommends either MinGW or Cygwin for compilation.

I installed the MSYS2 package manager into the default folder, C:\msys64, updated it by running update-core and pacman -Su.

I then downloaded the MinGW64 package using pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc, which has been placed into C:\msys64\mingw64.

The problem is, pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc currently downloads the version 5.0, which is not yet supported by CLion.

Does MSYS2 support installing older versions of packages (the MinGW version 4.9.2 should work just fine)? I tried searching for the MinGW packages using pacman -Ss mingw, but the list is incredibly long and as I haven't worked with MinGW before, I really do not know what to choose.