AT First
When I usually program in C++, I use Visual Studio Community. It’s free for personal use, and I really like that you can set breakpoints with the F9 key and press F5 to automatically build and run your program. Visual Studio Community is an extremely convenient and powerful IDE, but if you want to use it commercially with a team, you need a paid license. If you absolutely want to create commercial programs for free, you can use MinGW-w64, CMake, and Visual Studio Code as an alternative to Visual Studio Community.
As for MinGW-w64, the installation method tends to change from time to time, so I’d like to write down the method I tried this time as a memo ON 2025 November.
Download
Download the MinGW-w64 from the following site:
https://www.mingw-w64.org
It seems that clicking on w64devkit will take you to the github site.
https://github.com/skeeto/w64devkit
Installation file can be downloaded from the “Releases” section in the lower right corner.
Installation
Launch the installer (Double click on downloaded exe file), will be asked where to install it. Enter the name of the folder you want to install.
In case of above file path, MinGW-w64 was installed in "C:\prog\w64devkit".
Adding a Path for an Environment Variable
To compile C++ from the "Command Prompt", MinGW-w64 directory shoule be added to the path of the environment variable.
Press Windows + R, type sysdm.cpl, and press Enter.
In the System Properties window, click on Environment Variables.
Under the “System variables” section, find and select Path, then click Edit.
Click New, then paste the following path (or your custom installation path if you changed it): C:\Tools\w64devkit\bin
Click OK on all open windows to save the changes.
Installation Verify
Open command prompt and run g++ --version
c:\Users\Username>g++ --version
g++ (GCC) 15.2.0
Copyright (C) 2025 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.