Cannot build Boost with MinGW, it looks for Visual C++

Question

At first I tried to build Boost having both MinGW and Microsoft Visual C++ installed, with these commands:

bootstrap.bat mingw
.\b2

During the build process, I got plenty of log lines indicating that the build was being done for Visual C++ (msvc). So I stopped it, I completely uninstalled Visual C++ (using the Windows utility), I removed the Boost directory, I recreated it from the bz2 file, I checked that g++.exe was in the PATH, and I re-entered the previous two commands to reinstall Boost from scratch.

I keep getting an msvc build... Is there anything else I can do?

---

Windows console
From the logs, it seems that no configuration is selected:

> .\b2

Building the Boost C++ Libraries.

Performing configuration checks

    - 32-bit                   : no  (cached)
    - 64-bit                   : no  (cached)
    - arm                      : no  (cached)
    - mips1                    : no  (cached)
    - power                    : no  (cached)
    - sparc                    : no  (cached)
    - x86                      : no  (cached)
    - has_icu builds           : no  (cached)

---

MinGW console

$ ./bootstrap.sh

###
### Using 'gcc' toolset.
###
rm -rf bootstrap
mkdir bootstrap
gcc -o bootstrap/jam0 command.c compile.c constants.c debug.c execcmd.c frames.c function.c glob.c hash.c hdrmacro.c headers.c jam.c jambase.c jamgram.c lists.c make.c make1.c object.c option.c output.c parse.c pathsys.c pathunix.c regexp.c rules.c scan.c search.c subst.c timestamp.c variable.c modules.c strings.c filesys.c builtins.c class.c cwd.c native.c md5.c w32_getreg.c modules/set.c modules/path.c modules/regex.c modules/property-set.c modules/sequence.c modules/order.c execunix.c fileunix.c
builtins.c:34:23: fatal error: sys/wait.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.
execunix.c:20:26: fatal error: sys/resource.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.
fileunix.c:96:17: fatal error: ar.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.

These files are effectively missing. Shouldn't they be part of MinGW?

Answer 1

Build boost with mingw

open windows cmd
cd to your boost_1_53_0 folder.

To get a clean path environment
type (change to your mingw path)

set PATH=C:\mingw\bin

to test : type

path

output : PATH=C:\mingw\bin

type

bootstrap mingw

After bootstrap has finished,
then change following command to fit your needs.
type

.\b2 --build-dir=C:\boost-mingw toolset=gcc variant=debug link=shared runtime-link=shared

There are other ways to build boost. But above steps should be enough.