> does [Visual Studio] not also have the "nmake" and "cl" commands [Yes, the CLI tools are still there][0], and I expect them to be there in VS2020 as well. My problem with it is that I only run Windows in VMs these days, and then rarely, which means the [typical 20-50 GB installation size][1] chews up a tremendous amount of space, compared to what I'd normally consider a reasonable VM size. Indeed, most of my VMs are well under 20 GB *total*! When the host has a "big" 1 TB SSD, a 100 GB VM is rather costly. On top of that, the last time I installed VS into a VM, it took like 2 hours to set up. This brings me to my point in making that comment to the OP. He seems like a "just install the GUI and double-click things until it works" sort, so I felt the need to warn him that installing MinGW is actually the low-friction path, all things considered. [0]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/building-on-the-command-line?view=vs-2019 [1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/releases/2019/system-requirements