There are two interesting aspects to this. The first, which I initially thought was the point, is cross compiling programs for Windows using Mingw-w64 (a fork

There are two interesting aspects to this. The first, which I initially thought was the point, is cross compiling programs for Windows using Mingw-w64 (a fork of MinGW) in a container. Actually, this is just used as a dependable way to build the second, which is a portable archive of a Mingw-w64 development environment; portable in the sense that you extract, add to PATH, and use without any other installation required. Reading through the previous discussion, I think the biggest consideration for something like this is whether Mingw-w64 suffices for your needs. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23292161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23292161 The issue isn't whether the tools are capable enough, but whether they integrate well enough with the platform and any other dependencies your project may have. I'd be interested to hear from people who are using MinGW or Mingw-w64 on purpose. What works well, and what doesn't? With Visual Studio Community, Microsoft has made its tools broadly accessible. However, if all you want is a compatible linker, this is in a lot of ways a regression from Visual C++ Express, which is no longer offered. Indeed, the compiler and linker used to be bundled in the freely available platform SDK. As someone responsible for testing C and C++ APIs, the licensing and packaging in Visual C++ 2019 will be a much bigger hassle than in previous versions.