std::thread works in cygwin but not in MinGw

Question

So I decided to give c++ a try today. I downloaded MinGw and the g++ compiler that comes with it. I decided to test the following code:

#include 

        

Answer 1

MinGW-w64 (or rather GCC on windows) needs to be compiled with posix thread support if you want to use std::thread, presumably you downloaded a build with native windows threads.

Check out the mingw-builds folders targeting 64 bit or 32 bit and pick a version with posix threads. You'll also need to choose the exception handling method, if you don't have a reason to choose otherwise then stick with the GCC defaults of seh for 64 bit and dwarf for 32.

Answer 2

I tested this in linux (cross-compiling).

This compiles ok,

i686-w64-mingw32-g++-posix -std=c++11 threads.cpp -lwinpthread

this does not

i686-w64-mingw32-g++-win32 -std=c++11 threads.cpp -lwinpthread

The difference between the compilers is --enable-threads=win32 vs. --enable-threads=posix option used when the compilers were built. g++ -v should show what was used.