I already have MinGW on my computer. How do I configure it to work with MATLAB?

I already have MinGW on my computer. How do I configure it to work with MATLAB?

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

MATLAB detects the MinGW compiler by reading the environment variable MW_MINGW64_LOC. When you install MinGW from the MATLAB Add-Ons menu, MATLAB sets this variable. The following instructions can be used to set this environment variable manually.

Note:

Be aware that in order for any changes to be permanent, the "MATLAB Support for MinGW-w64 C/C++ Compiler" support package must be uninstalled if it was previously installed.

For MATLAB R2017b and later:

Verify that you have installed MinGW-w64 version 5.3 (or MinGW-w64 version 6.3 for R2018b and later, or MinGW-w64 version 8.1 for R2023a) before following these steps.

1) Download the attached MATLAB function 'configuremingw'.

2) Identify the full path to the MinGW installation directory containing the MinGW compiler binaries. This is identified as MINGWROOT.

3) In the MATLAB Command Window run:

>> configuremingw(MINGWROOT)

Alternatively, run:

>> configuremingw

Then navigate to MINGWROOT.

For MATLAB R2015b through R2017a:

Verify you have installed MinGW-w64 version 4.9.2 before following these steps.

The MW_MINGW64_LOC environment variable can be (A) set for the entire system level or (B) set temporarily every time you open MATLAB. Administrative privileges are required to set MW_MINGW64_LOC as a system environment variable. No special privileges are required to set the environment variable temporarily.

(A) To set MW_MINGW64 as a system environment variable on Windows 7/8/10:

1. Make sure you have administrative privileges.
2. Select Computer from the Start menu.
3. Choose System properties from the context menu.
4. Click Advanced system settings > Advanced tab.
5. Click Environment Variables.
6. Under System variables, select New.
7. In the New System Variable dialog box, type MW_MINGW64_LOC in the Variable name field.
8. In the Variable value field, type the location of the MinGW-w64 compiler installation, for example, 'C:\TDM-GCC-64'.
9. Click "OK" to close the dialog boxes, then close the Control Panel dialog box.

(B) To set MW_MINGW64 as a temporary environment variable using MATLAB:

Run the following in the MATLAB Command Window:

>> setenv('MW_MINGW64_LOC',folder)

where 'folder' is the installation directory of MinGW. For example, 'C:\TDM-GCC-64'. This command will need to be run every time you start MATLAB for MATLAB to correctly use MinGW. You can consider adding the above command to your 'startup.m' file. This will execute the command every time MATLAB starts up.

To Verify:

After performing the above steps, you can verify if the compiler was recognized by MATLAB by running the following command and seeing what the MW_MINGW64_LOC environment variable detected by MATLAB is set to:

>> mex -setup -v

Note: Be aware that due to caching limitations, the option to select the "MinGW64 Compiler" after running this command may show the incorrect command to be run. In reality, clicking on this option will use the version of MinGW pointed to by the MW_MINGW64_LOC environment variable.

[Walter Roberson]

You might need to Run As Administrator once to have the file be written to the right place.

[Walter Roberson]

Sanket, which operating system are you using?

[Walter Roberson]

You can use the techniques described in the following to set that environment variable permanently.

https://www.java.com/en/download/help/path.html

[Walter Roberson]

Yes, the attachment is a .p file, which is a binary file of encoded MATLAB source. You can Save As (or equivalent for your browser) to download it, and then move it to the proper location.

[Richard Crozier]

I am trying the described solution in Matlab R2018a. If I run without administrator priviliges I get the following when trying to run configuremingw

>> configuremingw 
Error using configuremingw
Unable to setup the MinGW compiler due to administrator privileges not granted

I then tried manually changing MW_MINGW64_LOC but without success, see the below matlab session:

>> mex -setup C++
MEX configured to use 'MinGW64 Compiler (C++)' for C++ language compilation.
Warning: The MATLAB C and Fortran API has changed to support MATLAB
	 variables with more than 2^32-1 elements. You will be required
	 to update your code to utilize the new API.
	 You can find more information about this at:
	 https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_external/upgrading-mex-files-to-use-64-bit-api.html.
>> getenv ('MW_MINGW64_LOC')

ans =

    'C:\ProgramData\MATLAB\SupportPackages\R2018a\3P.instrset\mingw_w64.instrset'

>> mingwdir = getenv ('MW_MINGW64_LOC')

mingwdir =

    'C:\ProgramData\MATLAB\SupportPackages\R2018a\3P.instrset\mingw_w64.instrset'

>> ls (mingwdir)

.                   build-info.txt      lib                 opt                 
..                  etc                 libexec             share               
bin                 include             licenses            x86_64-w64-mingw32  

>> ls ('C:\Program Files\mingw-w64\x86_64-6.3.0-posix-seh-rt_v5-rev2\mingw64')

.                   build-info.txt      lib                 opt                 
..                  etc                 libexec             share               
bin                 include             licenses            x86_64-w64-mingw32  

>> setenv ('MW_MINGW64_LOC', 'C:\Program Files\mingw-w64\x86_64-6.3.0-posix-seh-rt_v5-rev2\mingw64')
>> getenv ('MW_MINGW64_LOC')

ans =

    'C:\Program Files\mingw-w64\x86_64-6.3.0-posix-seh-rt_v5-rev2\mingw64'

>> mex -setup
MEX configured to use 'MinGW64 Compiler (C)' for C language compilation.
Warning: The MATLAB C and Fortran API has changed to support MATLAB
	 variables with more than 2^32-1 elements. You will be required
	 to update your code to utilize the new API.
	 You can find more information about this at:
	 https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_external/upgrading-mex-files-to-use-64-bit-api.html.

To choose a different language, select one from the following:
 mex -setup C++ 
 mex -setup FORTRAN
>> mex -setup C++
Error using mex
No supported compiler was found. You can install the freely available MinGW-w64 C/C++ compiler; see Install MinGW-w64 Compiler.
For more options, visit https://www.mathworks.com/support/compilers.
 
>> mex -setup FORTRAN
Error using mex
No supported compiler was found. For options, visit https://www.mathworks.com/support/compilers.
 
>> CC = mex.getCompilerConfigurations

CC = 

  2×1 CompilerConfiguration array with properties:

    Name
    Manufacturer
    Language
    Version
    Location
    ShortName
    Priority
    Details
    LinkerName
    LinkerVersion
    MexOpt

>> CC(1)

ans = 

  CompilerConfiguration with properties:

             Name: 'MinGW64 Compiler (C++)'
     Manufacturer: 'GNU'
         Language: 'C++'
          Version: '5.3.0'
         Location: 'C:\Program Files\mingw-w64\x86_64-6.3.0-posix-seh-rt_v5-rev2\mingw64'
        ShortName: 'mingw64-g++'
         Priority: 'E'
          Details: [1×1 mex.CompilerConfigurationDetails]
       LinkerName: 'C:\Program Files\mingw-w64\x86_64-6.3.0-posix-seh-rt_v5-rev2\mingw64\bin\g++'
    LinkerVersion: ''
           MexOpt: 'C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\MathWorks\MATLAB\R2018a\mex_C++_win64.xml'

>> CC(2)

ans = 

  CompilerConfiguration with properties:

             Name: 'MinGW64 Compiler (C)'
     Manufacturer: 'GNU'
         Language: 'C'
          Version: '5.3.0'
         Location: 'C:\Program Files\mingw-w64\x86_64-6.3.0-posix-seh-rt_v5-rev2\mingw64'
        ShortName: 'mingw64'
         Priority: 'E'
          Details: [1×1 mex.CompilerConfigurationDetails]
       LinkerName: 'C:\Program Files\mingw-w64\x86_64-6.3.0-posix-seh-rt_v5-rev2\mingw64\bin\gcc'
    LinkerVersion: ''
           MexOpt: 'C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\MathWorks\MATLAB\R2018a\mex_C_win64.xml'

>> rnfoundry_setup
Setting up mexslmeval.
Warning: mexslmeval compilation failed, you may be missing required libraries, gsl and gslcblas 
> In mexslmeval_setup (line 63)
  In rnfoundry_setup (line 319) 
Finished building mexslmeval.
Setting up mexMBCNodal and mexMBCNodalSharedMem.
Warning: Unable to compile mex function mexMBCNodal. Error reported was:
No supported compiler was found. You can install the freely available MinGW-w64 C/C++ compiler; see Install MinGW-w64 Compiler.
For more options, visit https://www.mathworks.com/support/compilers. 

As you can see, merely changing the MW_MINGW64_LOC does not corectly modify the compiler configurations, at least when matlab is run as non-root.

I tried again, after starting matlab.exe using 'Run as administrator' as below:

If I do this, I get the exact same issue when tryiong to run configuremingw

>> configuremingw ('C:\Program Files\mingw-w64\x86_64-6.3.0-posix-seh-rt_v5-rev2\mingw64')
Error using configuremingw
Unable to setup the MinGW compiler due to administrator privileges not granted.

setenv doesn't help either

>> setenv ('MW_MINGW64_LOC', 'C:\Program Files\mingw-w64\x86_64-6.3.0-posix-seh-rt_v5-rev2\mingw64')
>> mex -setup
MEX configured to use 'MinGW64 Compiler (C)' for C language compilation.
Warning: The MATLAB C and Fortran API has changed to support MATLAB
	 variables with more than 2^32-1 elements. You will be required
	 to update your code to utilize the new API.
	 You can find more information about this at:
	 https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_external/upgrading-mex-files-to-use-64-bit-api.html.

To choose a different language, select one from the following:
 mex -setup C++ 
 mex -setup FORTRAN
>> mex -setup C++
Error using mex
No supported compiler was found. You can install the freely available MinGW-w64 C/C++ compiler; see Install MinGW-w64 Compiler. For
more options, visit https://www.mathworks.com/support/compilers.

As others have noted, if configuremingw wasn't an obfuscated p file I could attempt to fix this. My suspicion is that configuremingw calls another system program or script which doesn't run with the same permissions.

Any suggestions for getting an alternative mingw to work on R2018a?

p.s. I also tried activating the administrator account, logging in as administrator and still get

>> configuremingw
Error using configuremingw
Unable to setup the MinGW compiler due to administrator privileges not granted.

[Paul Wintz]

The instruction the description of MINGWROOT as the "MinGW installation directory containing the MinGW compiler binaries" is confusing. I thought, initally, that the path would include the bin folder (after all, that is where the binaries are located). To the contrary, however, MINGWROOT should point to the parent directory of bin.

So I needed to set MINGWROOTC to \mingw\mingw64 not C:\mingw\mingw64\bin.

[Walter Roberson]

@Nagaraju Subramaniam

Both R2021a and R2021b support MinGW 6.3 64 bit

The message appears to be saying that package needs a MinGW 32 bit . That might potentially hint that the version of the package you are using might not be compatible with 64 bit MATLAB -- it depends what it needs the compiler for.

[Walter Roberson]

@Nagaraju Subramaniam

https://azrael.digipen.edu/~mmead/www/public/mingw/ has instructions for installing the 32 bit version.

CANoe_MatlabIntegrationPackage_MinGW_32_bin appears to be part of CANoe configuration, not MATLAB, so you might need to redo some CANoe installation steps.

[Zhibin Deng]

I got an error

"Error using configuremingw

Unable to setup the MinGW compiler due to administrator privileges not granted."

My matlab version is 2023a under Windows 11. I have run matlab using in the administrative mode.

How to solve this issue?

[Zhibin Deng]

Problem solved. mingw has to be installed in a path without space. Thanks @Ray Jiang