WSL VS setup-msys2

Compare WSL vs setup-msys2 and see what are their differences.

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WSL setup-msys2
432 3
29,198 346
4.2% 1.4%
9.2 6.5
8 days ago 5 days ago
C++ JavaScript
MIT License MIT License
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

WSL

Posts with mentions or reviews of WSL. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-06-01.

setup-msys2

Posts with mentions or reviews of setup-msys2. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-08-22.
  • Celebrating 6 years since Valve announced Steam Play Proton for Linux
    14 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 22 Aug 2024
    /? mingw: https://github.com/search?q=mingw&type=repositories

    msys2/MINGW-packages: https://github.com/msys2/MINGW-packages ; [..., SDL, gles, glfw, egl, glbinding, cargo-c, gstreamer, gtest, cppunit, gtk4, icu, jack2, gnome-text-editor, gtksourceview, kdiff3, libgit2, libusb, libressl, libsodium, libserialport, libslirp, hugo]

    msys2/setup-msys2: https://github.com/msys2/setup-msys2:

    > setup-msys2 is a GitHub Action (GHA) to setup an MSYS2 environment (i.e. MSYS, MINGW32, MINGW64, UCRT64, CLANG32, CLANG64 and/or CLANGARM64 shells)

    Though, if you're writing a 3d app/game, e.g. panda3d already builds for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

    panda3d > Building applications: https://docs.panda3d.org/1.11/python/distribution/building-b... :

    mstorsjo/llvm-mingw:

  • Getting Started with Git Bash
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 5 Feb 2022
    Other pages provide complementary information on that same topic.

    Another thing I appreciated was the explanation of MSYS2's environments:

    https://www.msys2.org/docs/environments/

    Being able to painlessly switch away from MSVCRT to UCRT was helpful in solving some UTF-8 difficulties I was experiencing at the time.

    Package management with pacman is rather pleasant, and the setup-msys2 GitHub Action makes it simple to provide your GHA workflow with the tools and libs you want:

    https://www.msys2.org/docs/package-management/

    https://packages.msys2.org/queue

    https://github.com/msys2/setup-msys2

  • GitHub Actions by Example
    13 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 24 Jan 2022
    > Actions reduce workflow steps by providing reusabe[sic] “code” for common tasks. To run an action, you include the uses keyword pointing to a GitHub repo with the pattern {owner}/{repo}@{ref} or {owner}/{repo}/{path}@{ref} if it’s in a subdirectory. A ref can be a branch, tag, or SHA.

    Aside from the typo, I wonder how many packages could be backdoored at once, if an action maintainer went rogue, seeing as there's no pinning for actions by default, and (according to https://github.com/msys2/setup-msys2/blob/main/HACKING.md) moving a tag is the default way to push updates to an action. (Interestingly get-cmake/run-cmake/run-vcpkg are all operated by the same person.)

What are some alternatives?

When comparing WSL and setup-msys2 you can also consider the following projects:

Scoop - A command-line installer for Windows.

tiny-differentiable-simulator - Tiny Differentiable Simulator is a header-only C++ and CUDA physics library for reinforcement learning and robotics with zero dependencies.

wslg - Enabling the Windows Subsystem for Linux to include support for Wayland and X server related scenarios

github-script - Write workflows scripting the GitHub API in JavaScript

tilt-extensions - Extensions for Tilt

tiny-differentiable-simul

Stream - Scalable APIs for Chat, Feeds, Moderation, & Video.
Stream helps developers build engaging apps that scale to millions with performant and flexible Chat, Feeds, Moderation, and Video APIs and SDKs powered by a global edge network and enterprise-grade infrastructure.
getstream.io
featured
InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads
InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.
www.influxdata.com
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