Compilation error: "stddef.h: No such file or directory"

Question

Whenever I try to compile this code it always ends up with this error:

    In file included from /usr/include/wchar.h:6:0,              from /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-cygwin/4.9.2/include/c++/cwchar:44,              from /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-cygwin/4.9.2/include/c++/bits/postypes.h:40,              from /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-cygwin/4.9.2/include/c++/iosfwd:40,              from /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-cygwin/4.9.2/include/c++/ios:38,              from /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-cygwin/4.9.2/include/c++/ostream:38,              from /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-cygwin/4.9.2/include/c++/iostream:39,              from test.cpp:1:     /usr/include/sys/reent.h:14:20: fatal error: stddef.h: No such file or directory     #include <stddef.h>                 ^     compilation terminated. 

The code I was trying to compile is:

#include <iostream> using namespace std;  int main() {     cout << "Hello World! :D";     return 0; } 

Answer 1

The error is because your gcc-core package and gcc-g++ are not of the same version. Either downgrade one of them to solve the problem or update both the libraries. Updating both the libraries is the recommended way.

Answer 2

I had this error on a fresh MinGW install, it had nothing to do with the installed packages mentioned in the current accepted answer by "Prasanth Karri". In my case the issue was caused by -nostdinc in my Makefile. I actually only needed that compiler flag when building for a different target platform (not when using MinGW) so I fixed the issue by removing that flag from MinGW builds.