The goal of winegcc is to be able to simply replace gcc/g++/windres with winegcc/wineg++/wrc in a MinGW Makefile, and just recompile the application using Winelib under Wine. While typically there are small adjustments that must be made to the application source code and/or Makefile, it is quite easy to do them in a fashion that is compatible between the MinGW and Wine environments.

This manual will document only the differences from gcc; please consult the gcc manual for more information on those options.

-Bprefix

This option specifies where to find the executables, libraries, include files, and data files of the compiler itself. This is a standard gcc option that has been extended to recognize a prefix ending with '/tools/winebuild', in which case winegcc enters a special mode for building Wine itself. Developers should avoid prefixes ending with the magic suffix, or if that is not possible, simply express it differently, such as '/tools/winebuild/', to avoid the special behaviour.

-fno-short-wchar

Override the underlying type for wchar_t to be the default for the target, instead of using short unsigned int, which is the default for Win32.

-mconsole

This option passes '--subsystem console' to winebuild, to build console applications. It is the default.

-mno-cygwin

Use Wine's implementation of MSVCRT, instead of linking against the host system's libc. This is necessary for the vast majority of Win32 applications, as they typically depend on various features of MSVCRT. This switch is also used by the MinGW compiler to link against MSVCRT on Windows, instead of linking against Cygwin's libc. Sharing the syntax with MinGW makes it very easy to write Makefiles that work under Wine, MinGW+MSYS, or MinGW+Cygwin.

-municode

Set the default entry point of the application to be the Unicode wmain() instead of the standard main().

-mwindows

This option adds -lgdi32, -lcomdlg32, and -lshell32 to the list of default libraries, and passes '--subsystem windows' to winebuild to build graphical applications.

-nodefaultlibs

Do not use the standard system libraries when linking. These include at a minimum -lkernel32, -luser32, -ladvapi32, and any default libraries used by the backend compiler. The -mwindows option augments the list of default libraries as described above.

-nostartfiles

Do not add the winecrt0 library when linking.

-Wb,option

Pass option as an option to winebuild. If option contains commas, it is split into multiple options at the commas.

Static linking is not currently supported against Wine's DLL. As a result, the -static, --static, and -Wl,-static options will generate an error.