gcc cygwin compile error

Question

what are the minimum packages to work with gcc under cygwin? I have installed gcc-core, gcc-g++, gdb, binutils, make. are these not sufficient? when I try to compile a basic c code I get following error

/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-cygwin/3.4.4/../../../../i686-pc-cygwin/bin/ld: cannot find
 -luser32
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-cygwin/3.4.4/../../../../i686-pc-cygwin/bin/ld: cannot find
 -lkernel32
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-cygwin/3.4.4/../../../../i686-pc-cygwin/bin/ld: cannot find
 -ladvapi32
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-cygwin/3.4.4/../../../../i686-pc-cygwin/bin/ld: cannot find
 -lshell32

there are dll files named user32 advapi shell32 in system32. does the linker search for them but not find? is it a path related issue? when I go $PATH

$ $PATH
bash: /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/cygdrive/c/Program: No such file or directory

and echo $PATH

$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/cygdrive/c/Program Files/PC Connectivity Solution/
:/cygdrive/c/Program Files/MiKTeX 2.8/miktex/bin:/cygdrive/c/WINDOWS/system32:/c
ygdrive/c/WINDOWS:/cygdrive/c/WINDOWS/System32/Wbem:/cygdrive/c/Program Files/AT
I Technologies/ATI.ACE/Core-Static:/cygdrive/c/Program Files/MATLAB/R2010a/runti
me/win32:/cygdrive/c/Program Files/MATLAB/R2010a/bin:/cygdrive/c/Program Files/S
amsung/Samsung PC Studio 3/:/cygdrive/c/Cygwin/bin:/cygdrive/c/Cygwin/usr/bin

Answer 1

Apparently, you are using MingW features (user32 is a Microsoft library, not a POSIX one). So you should install the MingW packages. Here is a list; I doubt you need all of them, though (the exact set will depend on the application you are trying to build).