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You can use GCC on MS Windows just fine. Installing MSYS2 will also give you a package manager.

Yes, of course. Unfortunately, sometimes you need to link to Windows binaries and therefore need to compile against the Windows ABI.

From https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/x86-Options.html

> -mabi=name Generate code for the specified calling convention. [...] The default is to use the Microsoft ABI when targeting Microsoft Windows and the SysV ABI on all other systems.

> -mms-bitfields Enable/disable bit-field layout compatible with the native Microsoft Windows compiler. [...] This option is enabled by default for Microsoft Windows targets.

Doesn't this work in practice, due to bugs?

(Not OP) The C++ ABI on Windows isn't compatible between g++ and MSVC, even though the C ABI is. Libraries using C linkage should work fine. MinGW-built programs link against the Microsoft C runtime (MSVCRT.DLL by default) which is itself MSVC-built, so linking MinGW programs to MSVC libraries has to work for anything to work.

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