Build, debug, and run Windows programs on Linux with the full MSYS2 ecosystem.

No VM. No dual-boot. No containers.

LinSYS2 installs the MSYS2 Windows package ecosystem on Linux — the actual Windows toolchain and libraries from MSYS2 repositories, running through Wine. You are building Windows binaries with the same toolchain that runs on Windows. Not a Linux port that behaves differently.

# Install a Windows compiler
linsys2-pacman -Sy mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-gcc

# Run it on Linux. No VM needed.
linsys2 run -- gcc -v

Two commands. You just installed and ran a Windows program without leaving Linux!

Traditional cross-compilation installs a Linux port of the MinGW toolchain. You compile with it, but the build process differs from Windows — and you cannot run or debug the result.

LinSYS2 installs the actual Windows toolchain from MSYS2. Same GCC. Same GDB. Same build process. You compile, debug, and run exactly as you would on Windows — from your Linux shell.

• Same toolchain as Windows — install the actual Windows GCC/LLVM, GDB/LLDB, and CMake/Meson, etc. Not a Linux cross-compiler port. Identical libraries. Identical behavior. Identical binaries.
• Full dev lifecycle on Linux — install packages, compile, debug, run tests, and ship Windows binaries, all from your Linux shell
• No VM, no containers — runs through Wine at near-native speed
• User-level isolation — everything lives in ~/.local/share/linsys2/. No root, no system conflicts
• Multi-target — ucrt64, clang64, and clangarm64 from a single machine

LinSYS2 has two commands:

Under the hood, linsys2-pacman runs the patched MSYS2 fork of pacman built for Linux, pointed at MSYS2's official repositories. Packages install to ~/.local/share/linsys2/.

linsys2 run uses an isolated Wine prefix and injects the environment via WINEPATH — no setup, no registry changes, no pollution of your existing ~/.wine. If you prefer, linsys2 register adds the environment to your existing Wine installation instead.

From AUR (recommended):

# Using yay
yay -S linsys2

# Or using paru
paru -S linsys2

Build manually:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/wszqkzqk/LinSYS2.git
cd LinSYS2
makepkg -si

Other distributions should install the equivalent packages under their own package names.

• Build dependencies: meson ninja-build gcc make git patch pkg-config libarchive libssl libgpgme libcurl
• Runtime dependencies: bash coreutils gawk grep gettext which curl gnupg openssl libarchive bzip2 xz zstd wine python

On Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt install meson ninja-build gcc make git patch pkg-config \
    libarchive-dev libssl-dev libgpgme-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev \
    gawk gettext which gnupg wine python3

On Fedora:

sudo dnf install meson ninja-build gcc make git patch pkg-config \
    libarchive-devel openssl-devel gpgme-devel libcurl-devel \
    gawk gettext which gnupg wine python3

Build and install:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/wszqkzqk/LinSYS2.git
cd LinSYS2
make && sudo make PREFIX=/usr install

# Sync databases and upgrade
linsys2-pacman -Syu

# Install packages
linsys2-pacman -Sy mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-gcc

# Search
linsys2-pacman -Ss zlib

# Remove
linsys2-pacman -R mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-cmake

# List installed packages
linsys2-pacman -Q

# Target a different environment
linsys2-pacman --env clang64 -S mingw-w64-clang-x86_64-llvm

linsys2 run works out of the box. It uses an isolated Wine prefix under ~/.local/share/linsys2/ and injects the environment's bin directory via WINEPATH — no prior setup, no registry changes, no pollution of your existing Wine installation.

# Compile a Windows executable with Windows GCC
linsys2 run -- gcc -o app.exe app.c

# Debug it with Windows GDB
linsys2 run -- gdb app.exe

# Build a CMake project the Windows way
linsys2 run -- cmake -B build -S .
linsys2 run -- cmake --build build

# Run any installed Windows program
linsys2 run -- python --version
# Run your own Windows executable
linsys2 run -- ./example.exe --your-flags

# Or drop into a shell where all Windows tools are in PATH
linsys2 shell

Always use -- to separate linsys2 options from the program's own flags.

Your existing Wine environment (~/.wine or $WINEPREFIX) is also supported:

linsys2 register    # add bin directory to your Wine PATH registry
linsys2 env         # inspect registration
linsys2 unregister  # remove from Wine PATH

The default is auto-detected from your CPU. Override with --env.

• GPL v2 or later.
• The pacman binaries are built from MSYS2 pacman sources with additional patches, also GPL v2+.

• MSYS2 — the pacman fork and package ecosystem
• Arch Linux — original pacman
• Wine — the Windows compatibility layer