Qt MinGW 64-bit
-
Hi and welcome to devnet,
Certainly not with 5.8. However there was a thread talking about that here.
As to why there was not yet a MinGW64, the answer is always the same: it's about manpower and hardware.
The CI has its limits and is already under heavy pressure building Qt for the 5.6 to 5.8 branches as well as dev. Each pre-built package is also tested. For Windows alone it means 5 different versions to generate and test.
-
-
Not necessarily, some people prefer to stay with OpenSource Tools and keep the same compiler as much as possible.
Also, to get started with Qt on Windows, the MinGW build is ideal since it doesn't require to go somewhere else for additional downloads and setup like Visual Studio does. You just have to select MinGW in the additional software in the installer. Furthermore, it's only been recently that the C++ tools can be downloaded independently, otherwise you had to install the whole of VS just to get the compiler and you also need to install the debugging tools separately. And by whole of VS, you also have to be sure to check C++ otherwise it's installed without it.
And from a compatibility point of view, the various versions of VS are not compatible with each others so you always have to ensure that you have all C++ dependencies built correctly.