Why do I get the error "The program can't start because msys-2.0.dll is missing from your computer"? Is there a fix?

Question

I have written a long program in C, so I am not writing the whole code. These are the libraries I a using (in case it matters)

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <windows.h>
#include <time.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <dirent.h>
#include "xlsxwriter.h"

The program runs perfectly on my Windows computer, and in my work computer as well where I have the same programs.

But when I am running in on a colleagues computer this error appears:

System error:
The program can't start because msys-2.0.dll is missing from your computer.
Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.

Is there some way to make it work without installing the whole visual studio?

Rookie C programmer here!:)

Edit: I am compiling like this:

gcc Example.c -o Example -static-libgcc -std=c99 -lxlsxwriter -lz

Answer 1

MSYS is probably a MinGW related runtime library (perhaps its C standard library).

You need to install it on any Windows computer executing a binary compiled with MinGW.

See also this question.

You may want to ask your colleagues to install MSYS2.

Perhaps consider also building a statically linked executable (so compile and link with -static passed to GCC).

^{(this is only an educated guess; I never used Windows)}

Answer 2

You need to build your program with the MinGW compiler, not the MSYS compiler.

See this answer for details.