Is it possible to install MSYS2 on Windows 7?

Question

Is it possible to install MSYS2 on Windows 7 Home Edition?

Interlaken

I think they dropped Win 7 support. Why not update to a newer OS? – Maynard

@Maynard I see you have "I support Monica!" in your bio. Why not update to a newer Q&A platform? – Unitarianism

@Unitarianism Because SO has gotten better, and Codidact is mostly dead (barely any questions in my area of expertise). – Maynard

@Maynard qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/… ... that aside, "SO has gotten better"... God, if that's what you people call "better", than I'm afraid what "best" would mean for you. – Unitarianism

Answer 1

The last release whose full installer supports Windows 7 is here. Just click on "Assets" then download the full installer.

https://github.com/msys2/msys2-installer/releases/tag/2022-10-28

Demers

this helped me ! Tks! – Adorable

Answer 2

Very easy. All you need is to download archive, not installer.

https://repo.msys2.org/distrib/msys2-i686-latest.tar.xz (32-bit)

https://repo.msys2.org/distrib/msys2-x86_64-latest.tar.xz (64-bit)

Then you should unpack it. Default location is c:\msys64

If it needs some api-ms-win- libs, then you can download them from here:

https://github.com/huangqinjin/ucrt

Shanel

Answer 3

Yes. The last supported installer is

https://github.com/msys2/msys2-installer/releases/tag/2022-10-28

; after installing, you can still bump the MSYS2 to 3.4.10-2 runtime by executing

pacman --noconfirm -S msys2-runtime-3.4 msys2-runtime-3.4-devel

(this will lock the versions to not go to 3.5.x, which isn't compatible with Win7 at all - see https://github.com/msys2/MSYS2-packages/pull/4422 and https://github.com/msys2/MSYS2-packages/issues/4425 )

Afterwards, you can do the pacman -Suy - while agreeing to complete sysupdate on Win7 might theoretically break your MSYS2 even if you lock your runtimes, in reality the May 2024-ish bash (5.2.026-1), filesystem (2023.02.07-1), pacman (6.1.0-3), pacman-mirrors (20240523-1), mintty (1~3.7.1-1) and the aforementioned 3.4.x runtimes most certainly work with Win7.

You can then even go up to 3.4.10-8 via

pacman -U https://repo.msys2.org/msys/x86_64/msys2-runtime-3.4.10-8-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
pacman -U https://repo.msys2.org/msys/x86_64/msys2-runtime-devel-3.4.10-8-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

Note that these aren't explicitly located in msys-runtime-3.4 subpackage so they are still marked as upgradable by pacman -Suy etc. - take care not to go higher than that. msys-runtime 3.4.10-10 explicitly states "The MSYS2 runtime version you are about to install will no longer run on your version of Windows." if you try to install. 3.5.x will break due to mintty compiled against Win10 kernel (and give the entry point GetSystemTimePreciseAsFileTime not found etc. errors).

Also, bear in mind that while the MSYS2 toolchain itself will mostly work, you might need to enable https://github.com/vxiiduu/VxKex or similar solution to provide the missing kernel functions for the MinGW parts, or use older builds of the libraries themselves. E.g., glib2 only works up to glib2-2.78.4-1, because glib2-2.78.6-1 is built against 3.5 Cygwin/MSYS2 runtime. Thus, e.g. even though mc 4.8.31-1 is still 100% Win7-compatible by itself, if you bump the glib2 too high, it will stop running due forwarding the error about missing MSYS2 function from the lib instead.

Further reading:

• https://www.msys2.org/docs/windows_support/#resources-for-unsupported-windows-versions
• https://github.com/msys2/MINGW-packages/issues/10088

Unitarianism