I've been cross-compiling Qt from Linux to Windows for a couple of years now. That way you can use the latest GCC version without having to wait for mingw to update their Windows version of it. Works like a charm.
Phoronix: Qt Developers Reconsider MinGW For Qt 5.0
While we're now up to the Qt 5.0 beta stage, Qt developers are still settling for what MinGW implementation to use for the Windows build of Qt 5.0...
http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTE3NDI
I've been cross-compiling Qt from Linux to Windows for a couple of years now. That way you can use the latest GCC version without having to wait for mingw to update their Windows version of it. Works like a charm.
Yeah I was dying to find that out. Now if we could find out which version of emacs they use.
Seriously, who cares about all that?
Is there any reason to use the MinGW builds, since there are official VS builds available, which are more "native"?
I personally have a very good experience using the "unstable" 4.7 builds of mingw-w64, both 32bit and 64bit, and this includes C, C++ and QT code.
Furthermore, mingw-w64 is an official part of Fedora 17, letting me develop and test the Windows side of my code from within Fedora (compile via mingw, test using wine) without wasting time booting the Windows XP/7 VMs unless I'm testing "final" code.
- Gilboa
One thing that surprised me in mingw64 is that if you don't specify a min version, it creates a binary that doesn't run on XP. (requires 5.2 by default, XP is 5.1)
Regular mingw (at least used to) give win95 as a default minimum.
Certainly a curious default to put in, when XP still has such a huge market share.