What is Msys for?

        If you learn how to program using Msys, your build process will be portable. This means that you can package makefiles code and other stuff you've used to create your program, bring it to a *NIX system and the package should build. This helps a LOT when you are doing cross platform development. And you can keep all your games.

install

        Get the mingw package from mingw at sourceforge and install it. To be sure it works get the ‘current’ version. Get the msys package from the same page and install it (installer). A console window will open and ask you for the path to the mingw binary, type the path, if it is correct this will be confirmed. Next you can click the Msys icon on your desktop and start using ‘native’ unix tools.

Essentials

        Another essential you need to install is the Msys developer toolkit. It will install a (Msys native!) perl version and some other stuff that is heavily used by configuration scripts. Now some of us still want more, which is not strange ofcourse, you might need bison and flex to build some parser, or you might want to use nasm to compile xvid.

Native windows versus native Msys

        Most Gnu tools are ported to native windows versions, you can find them at gnuwin32 at sourceforge however these are NOT native Msys versions. If you just put these tools in the Msys /bin or Msys /usr/bin dir, which seems natural, you're in trouble. Msys will convert POSIX paths that are used as arguments to Win32 paths. This is done for any executable not in /bin and /usr/bin. So if you place Gnu tools in the /bin or /usr/bin of Msys,the conversion won't take place. Since the stuff you find on gnuwin32 is ported to windows, they expect win32 paths. That's why you must place all native windows tools you want to use in the MinGW/bin directory. That way it is still in your path whenever you are in an Msys shell.Only especially for Msys developed tools go in the Msys/bin directory.

more stuff

        For example if you want Bison, you can’t get the native Msys build, cuz it is buggy, you must get the build from gnuwin32 . You have to tinker a bit with the installer to get it to install in the Mingw directory, but this way you should be able to use most of the Gnu tools.

environment variables

        When you are using Msys, you might need some environment variables set every time, like CVSROOT or whatever. You can set them in msys.bat which is in your msys directory add something like: set CVSROOT=/home/root/trunk. Then they'll be there every time. The other way is to use export...

Good luck!
Don't forget to read the README file in the msys doc directory

homepage--