CMake compilation failing on MSYS2

Question

I'm trying to set up CMake for a project I'm working on, and I'm first trying to compile a simple Hello World program in C. I'm using Windows 10 with MSYS2. If I invoke the compiler (GCC) directly in Bash, it compiles fine without warnings or errors and gives an executable as output which prints "Hello, world!" exactly as expected. My problem comes in when I try to use CMake to compile my project. When I run cmake -G Ninja .. to compile my project, it throws this error:

CMake Error at C:/msys64/mingw64/share/cmake-3.15/Modules/CMakeTestCCompiler.cmake:60 (message):
  The C compiler

    "C:/msys64/mingw64/bin/cc.exe"

  is not able to compile a simple test program.

  It fails with the following output:

    Change Dir: C:/Users/dylanweber/Documents/C-Projects/webapp/build/CMakeFiles/CMakeTmp

    Run Build Command(s):C:/msys64/usr/bin/ninja.exe cmTC_45340 && [1/2] Building C object CMakeFiles/cmTC_45340.dir/testCCompiler.c.obj
    FAILED: CMakeFiles/cmTC_45340.dir/testCCompiler.c.obj
    C:\msys64\mingw64\bin\cc.exe    -o CMakeFiles/cmTC_45340.dir/testCCompiler.c.obj   -c testCCompiler.c
    /bin/sh: C:msys64mingw64bincc.exe: command not found
    ninja: build stopped: subcommand failed.

Notice how it mentions C:msys64mingw64bingcc.exe... there must be some kind of path delineation problem but I've tried setting the CC environmental variable to C:\\msys64\\mingw64\\bin\\gcc.exe and C:/msys64/mingw64/bin/gcc.exe. I have been clearing the CMake caches between runs.

Here is my CMakeLists.txt file:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.15)

project(webapp)

set(CMAKE_BINARY_DIR ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/build)
set(EXECUTABLE_OUTPUT_PATH ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR})
set(LIBRARY_OUTPUT_PATH ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR})

file(GLOB SOURCES "main/*.c")

add_executable(webapp ${SOURCES})

My code is in a "main" folder which is currently just one "main.c" file, in addition to a build directory used to keep all the temporary files in. The most frustrating part is that CMake was just working an hour ago, and I didn't change anything. What can I do to fix this problem?

Answer 1

The solution was not only installing the MinGW64 version of CMake, but also the MinGW64 version of Ninja as well. Since they have different pathing schemes compared to MSYS, they didn't play well together until they were both on the same POSIX-like platform.