mxe/mxe

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_releases no_license

Adoption not part of the score

1312 stars · 549 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

MXE (M cross environment) is a GNU Makefile-based system that compiles a MinGW-w64 cross compiler on Unix systems and cross-compiles hundreds of free libraries (SDL, Qt, GTK, FFmpeg, Boost, etc.) for Windows targets. It supports static and shared builds for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows, verifies downloads by checksum, bundles ccache, and offers pre-compiled binaries for CI systems.

Use cases

• cross-compile a C++ application from Linux to a standalone Windows executable
• build statically linked Windows binaries of Qt or GTK apps without a Windows machine
• set up a reproducible MinGW-w64 toolchain with all library dependencies via make
• produce Windows binaries in a Linux CI pipeline using prebuilt MXE packages
• build a subset of libraries with automatic dependency resolution
• keep package versions and checksums up to date automatically

When to choose

• you develop on Unix but must ship native Windows (32/64-bit) executables
• you want static, self-contained Windows binaries with dependencies bundled
• you need a transparent, checksum-verified, make-driven cross-build environment
• you want CI-friendly precompiled cross toolchains

When to avoid

• you target platforms other than Windows (MXE targets MinGW-w64 only)
• you prefer managing your own toolchain and dependencies manually
• you need a native Windows build environment rather than cross-compilation
• your project depends on packages not covered by MXE's build matrix

Facets

cli-tool · maturity stable

build-tool compiler package-manager developer-tools developer-tools cross-platform windows windows cli mingw-w64 cross-compiler gnu-make ccache static-linking ci-binaries build-tool cross-compilation automation linux macos

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