mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake fails to start

[umlaeute]

Description / Steps to reproduce the issue

1. all this is done in an MINGW2 MinGW 64-bit shell
2. Update mingw64 to the latest and greatest

   pacman -Suy

   (on my system this currently updates to filesystem 2025.02-23.1)
3. install mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake

   pacman -S "${MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX}-cmake"

4. run cmake

   $ cmake || echo $?
   127

Expected behavior

i expect to be greeted with a the Cmake banner:

Usage

  cmake [options] <path-to-source>
  cmake [options] <path-to-existing-build>
  cmake [options] -S <path-to-source> -B <path-to-build>

Specify a source directory to (re-)generate a build system for it in the
current working directory.  Specify an existing build directory to
re-generate its build system.

Run 'cmake --help' for more information.

Actual behavior

nothing is printed, and instead i get an error code 127 (afair this is "file not found").

it took me a while to narrow this down, as I already had the cmake package (without the ${MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX}-) installed, and ran cmake before updating.
this would then cache the path to the cmake binary as /usr/bin/cmake, and subsequent runs would use the binary from the cmake-package, which is working correctly.
starting up a new shell, would clear the cache (so cmake is now resolved to ${MINGW_PREFIX}/bin/cmake - e.g. /mingw64/bin/cmake), and things start to fail.

Verification

• I have verified that my MSYS2 is up-to-date before submitting the report (see https://www.msys2.org/docs/updating/)

Windows Version

MSYS_NT-10.0-14393

MINGW environments affected

• MINGW64
• MINGW32
• UCRT64
• CLANG64
• CLANGARM64

Are you willing to submit a PR?

if I new how to fix the problem, I probably would submit a PR (but I don't)

[umlaeute]

i've also tested the MINGW32, UCRT64 and CLANG64 environments, and all fail.
I cannot test the CLANGARM64 environment on my hardware.

[MehdiChinoune]

Are you sure you used the corresponding shell, if yes then there is an issue in your OS.

[umlaeute]

i'm pretty sure, but how should I test/verify/...?

and why is /usr/bin/cmake working correctly?

the VM (based on Windows10 Enterprise 2016 LTSB) has been updated a couple of times, and I have not seen the issue before the last upgrade.
before the last upgrade (Windows version 1607, system build 14393.6897), I had the following versions of MinGW64 packages:

filesystem 2023.02.07-1 # pre-installed on the VM
cmake 3.29.2-1 # pre-installed on the VM
mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake 3.29.2-2 # fresh installation

everything works fine here (I just tested)

the recent update, was basically doing a Windows system update (still Win10; but now the system build says 14393.7785), a full upgrade of MinGW, installing Visual Studio 2022 (via chocolatey), and installing CMake-3.31.5(!) (via their download; lives in C:\Program Files\CMake\).

The upstream Cmake is in the PATH (that is: /c/Program Files/CMake/bin), but even if I remove it from the PATH the problem persists.

All the other Cmake's installed on the system appear to work fine:

origin	version	works?	path
upstream	3.31.5	💚	/c/Program Files/CMake/bin/cmake
MSVC 2022	3.30.5-msvc23	💚	/c/Program Files/Microsoft Visual Studio/2022/Community/Common7/IDE/CommonExtensions/Microsoft/CMake/CMake/bin/cmake.exe
MSYS2	3.31.5	💚	/usr/bin/cmake
MinGW64	3.31.5	💥	/mingw64/bin/cmake.exe

[MehdiChinoune]

You said "MINGW2 MinGW 64-bit shell" that shell does not exist, are you sure you used MINGW64 not MSYS shell.

[umlaeute]

indeed, that was a typo.
what I meant is the MSYS2 MinGW 64-bit shell icon on my desktop. sorry.

[Morilli]

You could try installing gdb (mingw-w64-x86_64-gdb) and run cmake via gdb to see what it outputs:

gdb -ex=r --args cmake