# Windows C++ binary compatibility: MinGW vs MSVC

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/windows-c-binary-compatibility-mingw-vs-msvc/1250>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Tags:** package, cxx\
**Created:** [January 2, 2017, 8:45pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/windows-c-binary-compatibility-mingw-vs-msvc/1250 "2017-01-02T20:45:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 6

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**Author:** ![tkelman](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tkelman/32/692_2.png) [@tkelman](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/tkelman)\
**Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 4:20am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/windows-c-binary-compatibility-mingw-vs-msvc/1250/6 "2017-01-03T04:20:37Z")

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MSYS2 uses a different exception handling variant on 32 bit than every  
other common mingw-w64 build. You’ll notice that in complicated enough C++  
code like qt. That’s the main reason we don’t really support MSYS2 in a  
first class way.

Easiest way is via the Julia package. There are a few examples of packages  
that have done this, notably ParallelAccelerator. It’s doable without  
installing Julia too in a few ways, but messier (see  
contrib/windows/get\_toolchain.sh).

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