High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! MinGW (Minimalist GNU for Windows), formerly mingw32, is a native software port of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) and GNU Binutils for use in the development of native Microsoft Windows applications; MinGW can function either as a cross compiler targeting Windows or as a native toolchain run on Windows itself. It is deployed along with a set of freely distributable import libraries and header files for the Windows API.