What is the difference between Borland, GCC and MinGW compilers?

Question

I have been programming for a while at an intermediate level of course. I have been executing the same code in these different compilers (mostly GCC and MinGW), but I'm unable to make out the difference between these compilers. I mean by what way is the one better than the other? Or what makes them different? Are there some special needs where you might want to use GCC and for others maybe MinGW?

Answer 1

MinGW and GCC are really the same compiler underneath. MinGW is a GCC port for the Windows platform.

The reasons why you would use different compilers (as in, based on different front-ends) are:

• You have a binary-only library that is guaranteed to play nice only if you use particular compilers and those happen to be different compilers for different platforms
• You need to target multiple platforms, and there is no compiler that targets all your platforms
• You have legacy code that uses particular compiler extensions on different platforms.