| Want to make it less gross? Make it completely go away. Installation of Go or Python is just like any other Windows install. You download an installer.exe or .msi, run it, and you're done. Things compile or run immediately, and you don't have to start using a "special" terminal just for it to work. My experience with MinGW is very different. Especially for dependent languages. "Step 1: Install MinGW" what does that even MEAN?: "Ok, I ran this installer, and it brought up the MinGW Installation Manager. Is it done? What am I supposed to do here? Which one do I choose? How do you even select a package? What even ARE packages? OK, so I select something then go the Package menu and select Mark for Installation. It's not doing anything. Is it done now? Close window. Nope that didn't work. Open it back up. Oh, so after marking a package I have to go to the Installation menu and choose Apply Changes. ..." This actually happened to someone I was trying to help over the phone. Heaven forbid they get lost in All Packages and get confused by the dozens of packages each with half a dozen versions and each with three different, non-descriptive "classes". Installation needs to be braindead simple. During installation it should show a list of extra languages that can be installed, where you can't uncheck 'base' (with an "Advanced Options" button in the corner that opens up the standard installation manager instead). It should set up any environment variables, including PATH, (and including restarting explorer to refresh the env) and it shouldn't require the use of any terminal other than cmd.exe (despite it being terrible). If you're installing something else entirely that depends on MinGW, their installer should be able to bundle the MinGW installer, and it should install without having to make any choices. It should detect if MinGW is already installed and install packages there instead, still completely automated. Make it go away. |
You seem to be confusing mingw.org (http://www.mingw.org/wiki/getting_started) and MinGW-w64 (http://mingw-w64.sourceforge.net) and your rant seems entirely directed at mingw.org.
The software distribution I was asking the parent poster about is MSYS2 (http://msys2.github.io/ and http://sourceforge.net/projects/msys2/), do please come back with constructive criticism on that project if you are interested enough to investigate further.