gcc unable to find “windows.h, winsock2.h and ws2tcpip.h” header files even after installing mingw package on Linux

Question

I am trying to create ac/c++ program using winsock2.h, windows.h and ws2tcpip.h in Linux. But I get the following error messages:

cannot open source file "winsock2.h"C/C++(1696)

Likewise for windows.h

cannot open source file "windows.h"C/C++(1696)

I have already installed Mingw on my system using this command

mingw-w64-common mingw-w64-i686-dev mingw-w64-tools mingw-w64-x86-64-dev

My Program

#include <windows.h>
#include <winsock2.h>
#include <ws2tcpip.h> 
#include <stdio.h> 
#pragma comment(lib, "Ws2_32.lib") 

 int main() { return 0; }

VSC ver - 1.45.1

OS - Debian

Answer 1

The problems seem to be something related to "not finding header files". If with gcc to include the custom headers path (or directory), you do something as below.

NOTE: My intentions here are not using the mingw offered headers with gcc; this is just for demonstration purpose.

dpkg -L mingw-w64-common gives such output on my system.

/usr/share/mingw-w64/include/windows.h
/usr/share/mingw-w64/include/winsock2.h
/usr/share/mingw-w64/include/ws2tcpip.h

gcc -v test.c gives such output on my system

#include "..." search starts here:
#include <...> search starts here:
 /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/9/include
 /usr/local/include
 /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/9/include-fixed
 /usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu
 /usr/include

So it is evident that the headers or not in the default search path. In this particular case, you need to compile with gcc -I/usr/share/mingw-w64/include . You give a similar option for your toolchain's compiler. But then you may need to deal with the linking errors based on what libraries your code is using.

Answer 2

The message format cannot open source file "winsock2.h"C/C++(1696) doesn't look like to me like something GCC would say. Is it possible that while you installed MinGW-w64 you are not using its GCC compiler? For MinGW-w64 to work you need to actualy us it's toolchain (compiler, linker).